THE STORY OF A BLADE OF GRASS. 
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“-Raised of grassy turf . 
Their table was, and mossy seats had round.” 
• Paradise Lost. 
The leafy bowers were their mansions of beauty, and the 
grass made green the pathway to their temple of love. 
All the philosophies and mythologies have had for 
their object the same end as that proposed by our own 
blessed Christian faith—the restoration of man to the 
Eden he has lost—the bringing together of the primal 
elements of his life and history. It is certainly humanly 
pardonable that men should seek of Nature that which 
is alone the gift of God; and the cravings of the human 
mind, in striving to solve the problem of destiny, have 
about them the signs of a poetry which the world will 
not willingly let die. 
And what of that ancient metaphor, “ a green old 
age ? 99 It must have its place here, though it must rest 
for its validity on the sanction of prescription, not on its 
obviousness, for less lively hues are the more evident 
figures of senility, though in truth a hearty old age is 
implied by it, an age rich in years and experience, but 
with faculties unclouded, and the ardour of youth so 
mellowed, that the sympathies are practical, and the im¬ 
pulses governed by wise judgments. How far back the 
phrase may be traced I know not; I can only think of 
“DrydeAs Dedication of the Georgies,” where he com¬ 
pares Yirgil and Horace, as to the respective excellences 
of the works they produced at successive periods of their 
lives. He says :—“ In the beginning of summer, the days 
are almost at a stand, with little variation of length or 
shortness, because at that time the diurnal motion of the 
