the
snow, darling of Diana," (Phoenissae, 801)). How wild the climate of this
pine region is, you may judge from the pieces in the note below[22] out of
Colonel Leake's diary in {59} crossing the Maenalian range in spring. And
then, lastly, you have the laurel and vine region, full of sweetness and
Elysian beauty.

28. Now as Mercury is the ruling power of the hill enchantment, so Daphne
of the leafy peace. She is, in her first life, the daughter of the mountain
river, the mist of it filling the valley; the Sun, pursuing, and effacing
it, from dell to dell, is, literally, Apollo pursuing Daphne, and _adverse_
to her; (not, as in the earlier tradition, the Sun pursuing only his own
light). Daphne, thus hunted, cries to her mother, the Earth, which opens,
and receives her, causing the laurel to spring up in her stead. That is to
say, wherever the rocks protect the mist from the sunbeam, and suffer it to
water the earth, there the laurel and other richest vegetation fill the
hollows, giving a better glory to the sun itself. For sunshine, on the
torrent spray, {60} on the grass of its valley, and entangled among the
laurel stems, or glancing from their leaves, became a thousandfold lovelier
and more sacred than the same sunbeams, burning on the leafless
mountain-side.

And farther, the leaf, in its connection with the river, is typically
expressive, not, as the flower was, of human fading and passing away, but
of the perpetual flow and renewal of human mind and thought, rising "like
the rivers that run among the hills"; therefore it was that the youth of
Greece sacrificed their hair--the sign of their continually renewed
strength,--to the rivers, and to Apollo. Therefore, to commemorate Apollo's
own chief victory over death--over Python, the corrupter,--a laurel branch
was gathered every ninth year in the vale of Tempe; and the laurel leaf
became the reward or crown of all beneficent and enduring work of man--work
of inspiration, born of the strength of the earth, and of the dew of
heaven, and which can never pass away.

29. You may doubt at first, even because of its grace, this meaning in the
fable of Apollo and Daphne; you will not doubt it, however, when you trace
it back to its first eastern origin. When we speak carelessly of the
traditions respecting the Garden of Eden, (or in Hebrew, remember, Garden
of Delight,) we are apt to confuse Milton's descriptions with those in the
book of Genesis. Milton fills his Parad