r the celestial sign of Leo, and resists witchcraft very potently,
as also all the evils that old Saturn can do to the body of man; for
neither witch nor devil, thunder nor lightning will hurt a man in the
place where a bay-tree is."

Reading in this old book of the ordinance and virtues of the familiar
herbs, I escape from the severities of botanical science into a maze of
queer fancies, well suited to those retrospective hours when we love
best what we least believe. And by the pleasant suggestion of astrology
I am led on to contemplate the starry heavens, which I do in the ancient
pastoral way, peopling them with mythical forms and connecting them with
the seasonable changes of rustic toil. I forget for the moment all the
discoveries of Copernicus and Kepler, and see eye to eye with
Cleostratus of Tenedos who nightly watched the stars from the sacred
slopes of Ida.

Much as the companionships of nature have meant for me, I would not have
any man content himself with these alone. It is not right to live the
slave of Pales, or become the rhapsode of docks and nettles. To be all
for the lower life, were it the fairest, is derogation; and Har and Heva
before they may enter into their kingdom of the flowers must first be
fallen spirits. But continually in the interludes of human endeavour to
rebathe the mind at these clear wells does indeed exceedingly purify and
strengthen against the returning and imminent encounter. Those long
retreats at Walden may not often be repeated, for man is either risen
too high or too far fallen to live well in the sole company of animals
and flowers. What sociologists call the consciousness of kind is as
vital to man as the consciousness of self; and to pine for adoption into
an alien kind is vain on this side transmigration.

Not seldom my wanderings in town and country lead me to quiet
churchyards, or to those vast cemeteries where the living have
established the dead in avenues and streets of tombs after their drear
suburban fashion. Solitude has ever persuaded to the contemplation of
death, and in these silent places I feel no shock of sadness but am
rather possessed by a familiar spirit of peace. As I wander from path to
path, my fancy is not lamed by mournful thoughts, but finds suggestion
amid the poor laconic histories by which these headstones appeal to him
that passes by.

It is with most men a natural desire to take their last rest in some
green God's acre, far from the smoke