the human meaning of that decay of the leaves. Now to go
back to the little creatures themselves. It seems that the upper part of
the moss fibre is {21} especially _un_decaying among leaves; and the lower
part, especially decaying. That, in fact, a plant of moss-fibre is a kind
of persistent state of what is, in other plants, annual. Watch the year's
growth of any luxuriant flower. First it comes out of the ground all fresh
and bright; then, as the higher leaves and branches shoot up, those first
leaves near the ground get brown, sickly, earthy,--remain for ever degraded
in the dust, and under the dashed slime in rain, staining, and grieving,
and loading them with obloquy of envious earth, half-killing them,--only
life enough left in them to hold on the stem, and to be guardians of the
rest of the plant from all they suffer;--while, above them, the happier
leaves, for whom they are thus oppressed, bend freely to the sunshine, and
drink the rain pure.

The moss strengthens on a diminished scale, intensifies, and makes
perpetual, these two states,--bright leaves above that never wither, leaves
beneath that exist only to wither.

15. I have hitherto spoken only of the fading moss as it is needed for
change into earth. But I am not sure whether a yet more important office,
in its days of age, be not its use as a colour.

We are all thankful enough--as far as we ever are so--for green moss, and
yellow moss. But we are never enough grateful for black moss. The golden
would be nothing without it, nor even the grey.

It is true that there are black lichens enough, and {22} brown ones:
nevertheless, the chief use of lichens is for silver and gold colour on
rocks; and it is the dead moss which gives the leopard-like touches of
black. And yet here again--as to a thing I have been looking at and
painting all my life--I am brought to pause, the moment I think of it
carefully. The black moss which gives the precious Velasquez touches, lies,
much of it, flat on the rocks; radiating from its centres--powdering in the
fingers, if one breaks it off, like dry tea. Is it a black species?--or a
black-parched state of other species, perishing for the sake of Velasquez
effects, instead of accumulation of earth? and, if so, does it die of
drought, accidentally, or, in a sere old age, naturally? and how is it
related to the rich green bosses that grow in deep velvet? And there again
is another matter not clear to me. One calls them 'velvet' b