merely unctuous {120} clods and clots, knitted together by mossy sponge. It
was all Nature's free doing! she had had her way with it to the uttermost;
and clearly needed human help and interference in her business; and yet
there was not one plant in the whole ruinous and deathful riot of the
place, whose nature was not in itself wholesome and lovely; but all lost
for want of discipline.

5. The other piece of wild growth was among the fallen blocks of limestone
under Malham Cove. Sheltered by the cliff above from stress of wind, the
ash and hazel wood spring there in a fair and perfect freedom, without a
diseased bough, or an unwholesome shade. I do not know why mine is all
encumbered with overgrowth, and this so lovely that scarce a branch could
be gathered but with injury;--while underneath, the oxalis, and the two
smallest geraniums (Lucidum and Herb-Robert) and the mossy saxifrage, and
the cross-leaved bed-straw, and the white pansy, wrought themselves into
wreaths among the fallen crags, in which every leaf rejoiced, and was at
rest.

6. Now between these two states of equally natural growth, the point of
difference that forced itself on me (and practically enough, in the work I
had in my own wood), was not so much the withering and waste of the one,
and the life of the other, as the thorniness and cruelty of the one, and
the softness of the other. In Malham Cove, the stones of the brook were
softer with moss than any silken pillow--the crowded oxalis leaves yielded
to the pressure of the hand, and were not felt--the cloven {121} leaves of
the Herb-Robert and orbed clusters of its companion overflowed every rent
in the rude crags with living balm; there was scarcely a place left by the
tenderness of the happy things, where one might not lay down one's forehead
on their warm softness, and sleep. But in the waste and distressed ground,
the distress had changed itself to cruelty. The leaves had all perished,
and the bending saplings, and the wood of trust;--but the thorns were
there, immortal, and the gnarled and sapless roots, and the dusty
treacheries of decay.

7. Of which things you will find it good to consider also otherwise than
botanically. For all these lower organisms suffer and perish, or are
gladdened and flourish, under conditions which are in utter precision
symbolical, and in utter fidelity representative, of the conditions which
induce adversity and prosperity in the kingdoms of men: and the Eternal