laborious,
united in aim, beneficent in fulfilment, may the image be used of the
leaves of the trees of Eden! Other symbols have been given often to show
the evanescence and slightness of our lives--the foam upon the water, the
grass on the housetop, the vapour that vanishes away; yet none of these are
images of true human life. That life, when it is real, is _not_ evanescent;
is _not_ slight; does _not_ vanish away. Every noble life leaves the fibre
of it interwoven for ever in the work of the world; by so much, evermore,
the strength of the human race has gained; more stubborn in the root,
higher towards heaven in the branch; and, "as a teil tree, and as an
oak,--whose substance is in them {63} when they cast their leaves,--so the
holy seed is in the midst thereof."

32. Only remember on what conditions. In the great Psalm of life, we are
told that everything that a man doeth shall prosper, so only that he
delight in the law of his God, that he hath not walked in the counsel of
the wicked, nor sat in the seat of the scornful. Is it among these leaves
of the perpetual Spring,--helpful leaves for the healing of the
nations,--that we mean to have our part and place, or rather among the
"brown skeletons of leaves that lag, the forest brook along"? For other
leaves there are, and other streams that water them,--not water of life,
but water of Acheron. Autumnal leaves there are that strew the brooks, in
Vallombrosa. Remember you how the name of the place was changed: "Once
called 'Sweet water' (Aqua bella), now, the Shadowy Vale." Portion in one
or other name we must choose, all of us,--with the living olive, by the
living fountains of waters, or with the wild fig trees, whose leafage of
human soul is strewed along the brooks of death, in the eternal
Vallombrosa.

* * * * *

{64}

CHAPTER IV.

THE FLOWER.

ROME, _Whit Monday, 1874_.

1. On the quiet road leading from under the Palatine to the little church
of St. Nereo and Achilleo, I met, yesterday morning, group after group of
happy peasants heaped in pyramids on their triumphal carts, in Whit-Sunday
dress, stout and clean, and gay in colour; and the women all with bright
artificial roses in their hair, set with true natural taste, and well
becoming them. This power of arranging wreath or crown of flowers for the
head, remains to the people from classic times. And the thing that struck
me most in the look of it was not so much the c