ON BAR, 379

9. DIAGRAM OF LEAF, 391

THE

CROWN OF WILD OLIVE

THREE LECTURES ON

WORK, TRAFFIC AND WAR

PREFACE.

Twenty years ago, there was no lovelier piece of lowland scenery in
South England, nor any more pathetic in the world, by its expression of
sweet human character and life, than that immediately bordering on the
sources of the Wandle, and including the lower moors of Addington, and
the villages of Beddington and Carshalton, with all their pools and
streams. No clearer or diviner waters ever sang with constant lips of
the hand which 'giveth rain from heaven;' no pastures ever lightened in
spring time with more passionate blossoming; no sweeter homes ever
hallowed the heart of the passer-by with their pride of peaceful
gladness--fain-hidden--yet full-confessed. The place remains, or, until
a few months ago, remained, nearly unchanged in its larger features;
but, with deliberate mind I say, that I have never seen anything so
ghastly in its inner tragic meaning,--not in Pisan Maremma--not by
Campagna tomb,--not by the sand-isles of the Torcellan shore,--as the
slow stealing of aspects of reckless, indolent, animal neglect, over the
delicate sweetness of that English scene: nor is any blasphemy or
impiety--any frantic saying or godless thought--more appalling to me,
using the best power of judgment I have to discern its sense and scope,
than the insolent defilings of those springs by the human herds that
drink of them. Just where the welling of stainless water, trembling and
pure, like a body of light, enters the pool of Carshalton, cutting
itself a radiant channel down to the gravel, through warp of feathery
weeds, all waving, which it traverses with its deep threads of
clearness, like the chalcedony in moss-agate, starred here and there
with white grenouillette; just in the very rush and murmur of the first
spreading currents, the human wretches of the place cast their street
and house foulness; heaps of dust and slime, and broken shreds of old
metal, and rags of putrid clothes; they having neither energy to cart it
away, nor decency enough to dig it into the ground, thus shed into the
stream, to diffuse what venom of it will float and melt, far away, in
all places where God meant those waters to bring joy and health. And, in
a little pool, behind some houses farther in the village, where another
spring ri