THE SEASON QE BROWN LEAVES. 
191 
that winter must heap snow on his tomb, as upon the 
graves of fallen leaflets ? Of whom may it be said, in 
the words of Ovid—■“ Actis oevum implet, non 
segnibus annis.^ The listless heart, the idle brain, 
the lips that have breathed curses, are to live for 
ever,- and the curses, and the evil passions, and the 
cherished hate, are to live also, and to grow as all things 
grow, through generation after generation. My child 
there has my face, my passion, my hope, my moral tur¬ 
pitude. Shall I not blush, then, that long ago I did 
not root out my sins and failings, and supplant them 
with a nobler growth of hopes and aspirations, that such 
only might break out in him, and that for his sake the 
browning of the leaf might find me worthy of the blessed 
hand of death ? Tor, truly, the destruction of things 
is only a necessary step in this endless growth on 
growth, and Death is himself the most potent of 
creators. 
If there were no browning of the leaf, how lost to 
hope and heart would be the fate of man! If the bud, 
once unfolded, had an individual life for ever, how 
localized, cramped, dwarfed, were those energies which 
now climb higher and higher on this ladder of created 
souls, to reach Heaven at last by that upward growth 
which death entails as a beautiful necessity ! If the 
primal earth, with its unformed soil, its dreary swamps, 
and creatures in the first stage of development still re¬ 
volved in sunlight and darkness, how aimless, hopeless, 
and stagnant were the frame of Nature! Yet, the 
moment that succession supplants this stationary life, 
every pulse of the world, every change of the seasons. 
