THE LEAF.
1. In the first of the poems of which the English Government has appointed
a portion to be sung every day for the instruction and pleasure of the
people, there occurs this curious statement respecting any person who will
behave himself rightly: "He shall be like a tree planted by the river side,
that bears its fruit in its season. His leaf also shall not wither; and you
will see that whatever he does will prosper."
I call it a curious statement, because the conduct to which this prosperity
is promised is not that which the English, as a nation, at present think
conducive to prosperity: but whether the statement be true or not, it will
be easy for you to recollect the two eastern figures under which the
happiness of the man is represented,--that he is like a tree bearing fruit
"in its season;" (not so hastily as that the frost pinch it, nor so late
that no sun ripens it;) and that "his leaf shall not fade." I should like
you to recollect this phrase in the Vulgate--"folium ejus non
defluet"--shall not fall _away_,--that is to say, shall not fall so as to
leave any visible bareness in winter time, but {41} only that others may
come up in its place, and the tree be always green.
2. Now, you know, the fruit of the tree is either for the continuance of
its race, or for the good, or harm, of other creatures. In no case is it a
good to the tree itself. It is not indeed, properly, a part of the tree at
all, any more than the egg is part of the bird, or the young of any
creature part of the creature itself. But in the leaf is the strength of
the tree itself. Nay, rightly speaking, the leaves _are_ the tree itself.
Its trunk sustains; its fruit burdens and exhausts; but in the leaf it
breathes and lives. And thus also, in the eastern symbolism, the fruit is
the labour of men for others; but the leaf is their own life. "He shall
bring forth fruit, in his time; and his own joy and strength shall be
continual."
3. Notice next the word 'folium.' In Greek, [Greek: phullon], 'phyllon.'
"The thing that is born," or "put forth." "When the branch is tender, and
putteth forth her leaves, ye know that summer is nigh." The botanists say,
"The leaf is an expansion of the bark of the stem." More accurately, the
bark is a contraction of the tissue of the leaf. For every leaf is born out
of the earth, and breathes out of the air; and there are many leaves that
have no stems, but only roots. It is 'the springing thing'; this thin film
of life; rising, with its _edge_ out of the ground--infinitely feeble,
infinitely fair. With Folium, in Latin, is rightly associated the word
Flos; for the flower is only a group of {42} singularly happy leaves. From
these two roots come foglio, feuille, feuillage, and fleur;--blume,
blossom, and bloom; our foliage, and the borrowed foil, and the connected
technical groups of words in architecture and the sciences.
4. This _thin_ film, I said. That is the essential character of a leaf; to
be thin,--widely spread out in proportion to its mass. It is the opening of
the substance of the earth to the air, which is the giver of life. The
Greeks called it, therefore, not only the born or blooming thing, but the
spread or expanded thing--"[Greek: petalon]." Pindar calls the beginnings
of quarrel, "petals of quarrel." Recollect, therefore, this form, Petalos;
and connect it with Petasos, the expanded cap of Mercury. For one great use
of both is to give shade. The root of all these words is said to be [GREEK:
PET] (Pet), which may easily be remembered in Greek, as it sometimes occurs
in no unpleasant sense in English.
5. But the word 'petalos' is connected in Greek with another word, meaning,
to fly,--so that you may think of a bird as spreading its petals to the
wind; and with another, signifying Fate in its pursuing flight, the
overtaking thing, or overflying Fate. Finally, there is another Greek word
meaning 'wide,' [Greek: platus] (platys); whence at last our 'plate'--a
thing made broad or extended--but especially made broad or 'flat' out of
the solid, as in a lump of clay extended on the wheel, or a lump of metal
extended by the hammer. So the first we call Platter; the second Plate,
when of the precious metals. Then putting _b_ for {43} _p_, and _d_ for
_t_, we get the blade of an oar, and blade of grass.
6. Now gather a branch of laurel, and look at it carefully. You may read
the history of the being of half the earth in one of those green oval
leaves--the things that the sun and the rivers have made out of dry ground.
Daphne--daughter of Enipeus, and beloved by the Sun,--that fable gives you
at once the two great facts about vegetation. Where warmth is, and
moisture--there, also, the leaf. Where no warmth--there is no leaf; where
there is no dew--no leaf.
7. Look, then, to the branch you hold in your hand. That you _can_ so hold
it, or make a crown of it, if you choose, is the first thing I want you to
note of it;--the proportion of size, namely, between the leaf and _you_.
Great part of your life and character, as a human creature, has depended on
that. Suppose all leaves had been spacious, like some palm leaves; solid,
like cactus stem; or that trees had grown, as they might of course just as
easily have grown, like mushrooms, all one great cluster of leaf round one
stalk. I do not say that they are divided into small leaves only for your
delight, or your service, as if you were the monarch of everything--even in
this atom of a globe. You are made of your proper size; and the leaves of
theirs: for reasons, and by laws, of which neither the leaves nor you know
anything. Only note the harmony between both, and the joy we may have in
this division and mystery of the frivolous and tremulous petals, {44} which
break the light and the breeze,--compared to what with the frivolous and
tremulous mind which is in us, we could have had out of domes, or
penthouses, or walls of leaf.
8. Secondly; think awhile of its dark clear green, and the good of it to
you. Scientifically, you know green in leaves is owing to 'chlorophyll,'
or, in English, to 'greenleaf.' It may be very fine to know that; but my
advice to you, on the whole, is to rest content with the general fact that
leaves are green when they do not grow in or near smoky towns; and not by
any means to rest content with the fact that very soon there will not be a
green leaf in England, but only greenish-black ones. And thereon resolve
that you will yourself endeavour to promote the growing of the green wood,
rather than of the black.
9. Looking at the back of your laurel-leaves, you see how the central rib
or spine of each, and the lateral branchings, strengthen and carry it. I
find much confused use, in botanical works, of the words Vein and Rib. For,
indeed, there are veins _in_ the ribs of leaves, as marrow in bones; and
the projecting bars often gradually depress themselves into a transparent
net of rivers. But the _mechanical_ force of the framework in carrying the
leaf-tissue is the point first to be noticed; it is that which admits,
regulates, or restrains the visible motions of the leaf; while the system
of circulation can only be studied through the microscope. But the ribbed
leaf bears itself to the wind, as the webbed foot of a bird does to the
{45} water, and needs the same kind, though not the same strength, of
support; and its ribs always are partly therefore constituted of strong
woody substance, which is knit out of the tissue; and you can extricate
this skeleton framework, and keep it, after the leaf-tissue is dissolved.
So I shall henceforward speak simply of the leaf and its ribs,--only
specifying the additional veined structure on necessary occasions.
10. I have just said that the ribs--and might have said, farther, the stalk
that sustains them--are knit out of the _tissue_ of the leaf. But what is
the leaf tissue itself knit out of? One would think that was nearly the
first thing to be discovered, or at least to be thought of, concerning
plants,--namely, how and of what they are made. We say they 'grow.' But you
know that they can't grow out of nothing;--this solid wood and rich tracery
must be made out of some previously existing substance. What is the
substance?--and how is it woven into leaves.--twisted into wood?
11. Consider how fast this is done, in spring. You walk in February over a
slippery field, where, through hoar-frost and mud, you perhaps hardly see
the small green blades of trampled turf. In twelve weeks you wade through
the same field up to your knees in fresh grass; and in a week or two more,
you mow two or three solid haystacks off it. In winter you walk by your
currant-bush, or your vine. They are shrivelled sticks--like bits of black
tea in the canister. You pass again in May, and {46} the currant-bush looks
like a young sycamore tree; and the vine is a bower: and meanwhile the
forests, all over this side of the round world, have grown their foot or
two in height, with new leaves--so much deeper, so much denser than they
were. Where has it all come from? Cut off the fresh shoots from a single
branch of any tree in May. Weigh them; and then consider that so much
weight has been added to every such living branch, everywhere, this side
the equator, within the last two months. What is all that made of?
12. Well, this much the botanists really know, and tell us,--It is made
chiefly of the breath of animals: that is to say, of the substance which,
during the past year, animals have breathed into the air; and which, if
they went on breathing, and their breath were not made into trees, would
poison them, or rather suffocate them, as people are suffocated in
uncleansed pits, and dogs in the Grotta del Cane. So that you may look upon
the grass and forests of the earth as a kind of green hoar-frost, frozen
upon it from our breath, as, on the window-panes, the white arborescence of
ice.
13. But how is it made into wood?
The substances that have been breathed into the air are charcoal, with
oxygen and hydrogen,--or, more plainly, charcoal and water. Some necessary
earths,--in smaller quantity, but absolutely essential,--the trees get from
the ground; but, I believe all the charcoal they want, and most of the
water, from the air. Now the question is, where and how do they take it in,
and digest it into wood? {47}
14. You know, in spring, and partly through all the year, except in frost,
a liquid called 'sap' circulates in trees, of which the nature, one should
have thought, might have been ascertained by mankind in the six thousand
years they have been cutting wood. Under the impression always that it _had
been_ ascertained, and that I could at any time know all about it, I have
put off till to-day, 19th October, 1869, when I am past fifty, the knowing
anything about it at all. But I will really endeavour now to ascertain
something, and take to my botanical books, accordingly, in due order.
(1) Dresser's "Rudiments of Botany." 'Sap' not in the index; only Samara,
and Sarcocarp,--about neither of which I feel the smallest curiosity. (2)
Figuier's "Histoire des Plantes."[18] 'Sêve,' not in index; only Serpolet,
and Sherardia arvensis, which also have no help in them for me. (3)
Balfour's "Manual of Botany." 'Sap,'--yes, at last. "Article 257. Course of
fluids in exogenous stems." I don't care about the course just now: I want
to know where the fluids come from. "If a plant be plunged into a weak
solution of acetate of lead,"--I don't in the least want to know what
happens. "From the minuteness of the tissue, it is not easy to determine
the vessels through which the sap moves." Who said it was? If it had been
easy, I should have done it myself. "Changes take place in the composition
of the {48} sap in its upward course." I dare say; but I don't know yet
what its composition is before it begins going up. "The Elaborated Sap by
Mr. Schultz has been called 'latex.'" I wish Mr. Schultz were in a hogshead
of it, with the top on. "On account of these movements in the latex, the
laticiferous vessels have been denominated cinenchymatous." I do not
venture to print the expressions which I here mentally make use of.
15. Stay,--here, at last, in Article 264, is something to the purpose: "It
appears then that, in the case of Exogenous plants, the fluid matter in the
soil, containing different substances in solution, is sucked up by the
extremities of the roots." Yes, but how of the pine trees on yonder
rock?--Is there any sap in the rock, or water either? The moisture must be
seized during actual rain on the root, or stored up from the snow; stored
up, any way, in a tranquil, not actively sappy, state, till the time comes
for its change, of which there is no account here.
16. I have only one chance left now. Lindley's "Introduction to Botany."
'Sap,'--yes,--'General motion of.' II. 325. "The course which is taken by
the sap, after entering a plant, is the first subject for consideration."
My dear doctor, I have learned nearly whatever I know of plant structure
from you, and am grateful; and that it is little, is not your fault, but
mine. But this--let me say it with all sincere respect--is not what you
should have told me here. You know, far better than I, that 'sap' never
does enter a plant at all; but only salt, or earth and water, {49} and that
the roots alone could not make it; and that, therefore, the course of it
must be, in great part, the result or process of the actual making. But I
will read now, patiently; for I know you will tell me much that is worth
hearing, though not perhaps what I want.
Yes; now that I have read Lindley's statement carefully, I find it is full
of precious things; and this is what, with thinking over it, I can gather
for you.
17. First, towards the end of January,--as the light enlarges, and the
trees revive from their rest,--there is a general liquefaction of the blood
of St. Januarius in their stems; and I suppose there is really a great deal
of moisture rapidly absorbed from the earth in most cases; and that this
absorption is a great help to the sun in drying the winter's damp out of it
for us: then, with that strange vital power,--which scientific people are
usually as afraid of naming as common people are afraid of naming
Death,--the tree gives the gathered earth and water a changed existence;
and to this new-born liquid an upward motion from the earth, as our blood
has from the heart; for the life of the tree is out of the earth; and this
upward motion has a mechanical power in pushing on the growth. "_Forced
onward_ by the current of sap, the plumule ascends," (Lindley, p.
132,)--this blood of the tree having to supply, exactly as our own blood
has, not only the forming powers of substance, but a continual evaporation,
"approximately seventeen times more than that of the human body," while the
force of motion in the sap "is {50} sometimes five times greater than that
which impels the blood in the crural artery of the horse."
18. Hence generally, I think we may conclude thus much,--that at every pore
of its surface, under ground and above, the plant in the spring absorbs
moisture, which instantly disperses itself through its whole system "by
means of some permeable quality of the membranes of the cellular tissue
invisible to our eyes even by the most powerful glasses" (p. 326); that in
this way subjected to the vital power of the tree, it becomes sap, properly
so called, which passes downwards through this cellular tissue, slowly and
secretly; and then upwards, through the great vessels of the tree,
violently, stretching out the supple twigs of it as yon see a flaccid
waterpipe swell and move when the cock is turned to fill it. And the tree
becomes literally a fountain, of which the springing streamlets are clothed
with new-woven garments of green tissue, and of which the silver spray
stays in the sky,--a spray, now, of leaves.
19. That is the gist of the matter; and a very wonderful gist it is, to my
mind. The secret and subtle descent--the violent and exulting resilience of
the tree's blood,--what guides it?--what compels? The creature has no heart
to beat like ours; one cannot take refuge from the mystery in a 'muscular
contraction.' Fountain without supply--playing by its own force, for ever
rising and falling all through the days of Spring, spending itself at last
in gathered clouds of leaves, and iris of blossom.
Very wonderful; and it seems, for the present, that {51} we know nothing
whatever about its causes;--nay, the strangeness of the reversed arterial
and vein motion, without a heart, does not seem to strike anybody. Perhaps,
however, it may interest you, as I observe it does the botanists, to know
that the cellular tissue through which the motion is effected is called
Parenchym, and the woody tissue, Bothrenchym; and that Parenchym is
divided, by a system of nomenclature which "has some advantages over that
more commonly in use,"[19] into merenchyma, conenchyma, ovenchyma,
atractenchyma, cylindrenchyma, colpenchyma, cladenchyma, and prismenchyma.
20. Take your laurel branch into your hand again. There are, as you must
well know, innumerable shapes and orders of leaves;--there are some like
claws; some like fingers, and some like feet; there are endlessly cleft
ones, and endlessly clustered ones, and inscrutable divisions within
divisions of the fretted verdure; and wrinkles, and ripples, and
stitchings, and hemmings, and pinchings, and gatherings, and crumplings,
and clippings, and what not. But there is nothing so constantly noble as
the pure leaf of the laurel, bay, orange, and olive; numerable, sequent,
perfect in setting, divinely simple and serene. I shall call these noble
leaves 'Apolline' leaves. They characterize many orders of plants, great
and small,--from the magnolia to the myrtle, and exquisite 'myrtille' {52}
of the hills, (bilberry); but wherever you find them, strong, lustrous,
dark green, simply formed, richly scented or stored,--you have nearly
always kindly and lovely vegetation, in healthy ground and air.
21. The gradual diminution in rank beneath the Apolline leaf, takes place
in others by the loss of one or more of the qualities above named. The
Apolline leaf, I said, is strong, lustrous, full in its green, rich in
substance, simple in form. The inferior leaves are those which have lost
strength, and become thin, like paper; which have lost lustre, and become
dead by roughness of surface, like the nettle,--(an Apolline leaf may
become dead by _bloom_, like the olive, yet not lose beauty); which have
lost colour and become feeble in green, as in the poplar, or _crudely_
bright, like rice; which have lost substance and softness, and have nothing
to give in scent or nourishment; or become flinty or spiny; finally, which
have lost simplicity, and become cloven or jagged. Many of these losses are
partly atoned for by gain of some peculiar loveliness. Grass and moss, and
parsley and fern, have each their own delightfulness; yet they are all of
inferior power and honour, compared to the Apolline leaves.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.]
22. You see, however, that though your laurel leaf has a central stem, and
traces of ribs branching from it, in a vertebrated manner, they are so
faint that we cannot take it for a type of vertebrate structure. But the
two figures of elm and alisma leaf, given in Modern Painters (vol. iii.),
and now here repeated, Fig. 3, will clearly enough {53} show the opposition
between this vertebrate form, branching again usually at the edges, _a_,
and the softly opening lines diffused at the stem, and gathered at the
point of the leaf _b_, which, as you almost without doubt know already are
characteristic of a vast group of plants, including especially all the
lilies, grasses, and palms, which for the most part are the signs of local
or temporary moisture in hot countries;--local, as of fountains and
streams; temporary, as of rain or inundation.
But temporary, still more definitely in the day, than in the year. When you
go out, delighted, into the dew of the morning, have you ever considered
why it is so rich upon the grass;--why it is _not_ upon the trees? It _is_
partly on the trees, but yet your memory of it will be always chiefly of
its gleam upon the lawn. On many {54} trees you will find there is none at
all. I cannot follow out here the many inquiries connected with this
subject, but, broadly, remember the branched trees are fed chiefly by
rain,--the unbranched ones by dew, visible or invisible; that is to say, at
all events by moisture which they can gather for themselves out of the air;
or else by streams and springs. Hence the division of the verse of the song
of Moses: "My doctrine shall drop as the rain; my speech shall distil as
the dew: as the _small_ rain upon the tender _herb_, and as the showers
upon the grass."
23. Next, examining the direction of the veins in the leaf of the alisma,
_b_, Fig. 3, you see they all open widely, as soon as they can, towards the
thick part of the leaf; and then taper, apparently with reluctance, pushing
each other outwards, to the point. If the leaf were a lake of the same
shape, and its stem the entering river, the lines of the currents passing
through it would, I believe, be nearly the same as that of the veins in the
aquatic leaf. I have not examined the fluid law accurately, and I do not
suppose there is more real correspondence than may be caused by the leaf's
expanding in every permitted direction, as the water would, with all the
speed it can; but the resemblance is so close as to enable you to fasten
the relation of the unbranched leaves to streams more distinctly in your
mind,--just as the toss of the palm leaves from their stem may, I think, in
their likeness to the springing of a fountain, remind you of their relation
to the desert, and their necessity, therein, to life of man and beast. {55}
24. And thus, associating these grass and lily leaves always with
fountains, or with dew, I think we may get a pretty general name for them
also. You know that Cora, our Madonna of the flowers, was lost in Sicilian
Fields: you know, also, that the fairest of Greek fountains, lost in
Greece, was thought to rise in a Sicilian islet; and that the real
springing of the noble fountain in that rock was one of the causes which
determined the position of the greatest Greek city of Sicily. So I think,
as we call the fairest branched leaves 'Apolline,' we will call the fairest
flowing ones 'Arethusan.' But remember that the Apolline leaf represents
only the central type of land leaves, and is, within certain limits, of a
fixed form; while the beautiful Arethusan leaves, alike in flowing of their
lines, change their forms indefinitely,--some shaped like round pools, and
some like winding currents, and many like arrows, and many like hearts, and
otherwise varied and variable, as leaves ought to be,--that rise out of the
waters, and float amidst the pausing of their foam.
25. Brantwood, _Easter Day_, 1875.--I don't like to spoil my pretty
sentence, above; but on reading it over, I suspect I wrote it confusing the
water-lily leaf, and other floating ones of the same kind, with the
Arethusan forms. But the water-lily and water-ranunculus leaves, and such
others, are to the orders of earth-loving leaves what ducks and swans are
to birds; (the swan is the water-lily of birds;) they are _swimming_
leaves; not properly watery creatures, or able to live under water like
fish, (unless {56} when dormant), but just like birds that pass their lives
on the surface of the waves--though they must breathe in the air.
And these natant leaves, as they lie on the water surface, do not want
strong ribs to carry them,[20] but have very delicate ones beautifully
branching into the orbed space, to keep the tissue nice and flat; while, on
the other hand, leaves that really have to grow under water, sacrifice
their tissue, and keep only their ribs, like coral animals; ('Ranunculus
heterophyllus,' 'other-leaved Frog-flower,' and its like,) just as, if you
keep your own hands too long in water, they shrivel at the finger-ends.
26. So that you must not attach any great botanical importance to the
characters of contrasted aspects in leaves, which I wish you to express by
the words 'Apolline' and 'Arethusan'; but their mythic importance is very
great, and your careful observance of it will help you completely to
understand the beautiful Greek fable of Apollo and Daphne. There are indeed
several Daphnes, and the first root of the name is far away in another
field of thought altogether, connected with the Gods of Light. But
etymology, the best of servants, is an unreasonable master; and Professor
Max Müller trusts his deep-reaching knowledge of the first ideas connected
with the names of Athena {57} and Daphne, too implicitly, when he supposes
this idea to be retained in central Greek theology. 'Athena' originally
meant only the dawn, among nations who knew nothing of a Sacred Spirit. But
the Athena who catches Achilles by the hair, and urges the spear of Diomed,
has not, in the mind of Homer, the slightest remaining connection with the
mere beauty of daybreak. Daphne chased by Apollo, may perhaps--though I
doubt even this much of consistence in the earlier myth--have meant the
Dawn pursued by the Sun. But there is no trace whatever of this first idea
left in the fable of Arcadia and Thessaly.
27. The central Greek Daphne is the daughter of one of the great _river_
gods of Arcadia; her mother is the Earth. Now Arcadia is the Oberland of
Greece; and the crests of Cyllene, Erymanthus, and Mænalus[21] surround it,
like the Swiss forest cantons, with walls of rock, and shadows of pine. And
it divides itself, like the Oberland, into three regions: first, the region
of rock and snow, sacred to Mercury and Apollo, in which Mercury's birth on
Cyllene, his construction of the lyre, and his stealing the oxen of Apollo,
are all expressions of the enchantments of cloud and sound, mingling with
the sunshine, on the cliffs of Cyllene.
"While the mists
Flying, and rainy vapours, call out shapes
{58}
And phantoms from the crags and solid earth
As fast as a musician scatters sounds
Out of his instrument."
Then came the pine region, sacred especially to Pan and Mænalus, the son of
Lycaon and brother of Callisto; and you had better remember this
relationship carefully, for the sake of the meaning of the constellations
of Ursa Major and the Mons Mænalius, and of their wolf and bear traditions;
(compare also the strong impression on the Greek mind of the wild
leafiness, nourished by snow, of the Boeotian Cithæron,--"Oh, thou
lake-hollow, full of divine leaves, and of wild creatures, nurse of the
snow, darling of Diana," (Phoenissæ, 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 Mænalian 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 Paradise with flowers; but no flowers are
spoken of in Genesis. We may indeed conclude that in speaking of every herb
of the field, flowers are included. But they {61} are not named. The things
that are _named_ in the Garden of Delight are trees only.
The words are, "every tree that was pleasant to the sight and good for
food;" and as if to mark the idea more strongly for us in the Septuagint,
even the ordinary Greek word for tree is not used, but the word [Greek:
xulon],--literally, every 'wood,' every piece of _timber_ that was pleasant
or good. They are indeed the "vivi travi,"--living rafters, of Dante's
Apennine.
Do you remember how those trees were said to be watered? Not by the four
rivers only. The rivers could not supply the place of rain. No rivers do;
for in truth they are the refuse of rain. No storm-clouds were there, nor
hidings of the blue by darkening veil; but there went up a _mist_ from the
earth, and watered the face of the ground,--or, as in Septuagint and
Vulgate, "There went forth a fountain from the earth, and gave the earth to
drink."
30. And now, lastly, we continually think of that Garden of Delight, as if
it existed, or could exist, no longer; wholly forgetting that it is spoken
of in Scripture as perpetually existent; and some of its fairest trees as
existent also, or only recently destroyed. When Ezekiel is describing to
Pharaoh the greatness of the Assyrians, do you remember what image he gives
of them? "Behold, the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon, with fair branches;
and his top was among the thick boughs; the waters nourished him, and the
deep brought him up, with her rivers {62} running round about his plants.
Under his branches did all the beasts of the field bring forth their young;
and under his shadow dwelt all great nations."
31. Now hear what follows. "The cedars _in the Garden of God_ could not
hide _him_. The fir trees were not like his boughs, and the chestnut trees
were not like his branches; nor any tree in the Garden of God was like unto
him in beauty."
So that you see, whenever a nation rises into consistent, vital, and,
through many generations, enduring power, _there_ is still the Garden of
God; still it is the water of life which feeds the roots of it; and still
the succession of its people is imaged by the perennial leafage of trees of
Paradise. Could this be said of Assyria, and shall it not be said of
England? How much more, of lives such as ours should be,--just, 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.
* * * * *
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