the visible emblem of the Eternal. The green grass was the first altar, and the brown forest with its roof of sky the first temple. The Druids walked in solemn procession over the dewy sward of the forest, when, with shouts of joy and wild songs of gladness, they assembled to commemorate the egress of the ark. Then the caves were festooned with garlands; an altar was built of grasses and vine leaves; the crystal cups of honey were twined with clusters of wild blossoms; the trees were festooned with flowers; and citterns, emblematical of the sun-god, were hung among the garlands. Then in the twilight recesses the priests performed the mystic dance, and as the May smile of morning broke upon the hills and fields, the hymns of the May-women were whispered in wild melodies, and the invocation to May was performed upon the green. The cattle lowed in the meadows, the birds sang in the valleys, and the sun, pillowed on the clouds of heaven, flushed the fountains. and the forests with his golden fire. The multitude fell prostrate on the grass. The priests bowed to the pavilion of celestial glory; and with one accord the throngs of worshippers broke forth into hymns of praise, so that solemn music and sweet odours were eminent in the rituals of the grassy temples of the ancient Britons.*

When man, first waking up from rude barbarism, perceived the relations of the world without to the world within himself, he sought to embody the unshapen poetry of his heart in some form of simple beauty, and he took the grass as the first representative of the exuberance of nature. He made manifest his thankful* Harrovian.

ness for the fruits of the ground in offerings of the green grass which made beautiful his pathway through the world, and by the seeds of which his fields were sown with plenty. The period is of immense antiquity when the inhabitants of the sacred region of the Nile began first, from the vestal hearth, to sacrifice to the celestial gods, not myrrh, cassia, nor the first fruits of things mingled with the crocus of frankincense--for afterwards, when wanting the necessities of life, those were offered with great labour and many tears, as libations to the god," but grass, which as a certain soft wool of a prolific nature, they plucked with their hands." "They gathered the blades and the roots, and all the germs of this herb, and committed them to the flames, as a sacrifice to the gods, to whom they paid immortal honour through fire."* Hence, too, the patriarchs and poets of the olden times painted Damater, the mother of the gods-the same that was Cu-bell, the chief goddess of the Chaldeans, the Cybele of the Ionians, and the Rhoia of the Doric people-as sitting amid green grass, and surrounded with fragrant flowers. On the oldest coins of Syria she sits beside the hive, with ears of corn in her hands, to denote the return of the seasons and their exuberance of fruits; while at her feet the grasses grow and wave, to typify the seasonal renewals of green beauty on the earth. So, too, the benefactors of humanity were represented as surrounded with emblems of rural beauty, and as such, Saturn, the man of piety and justice, is described with the sickle in hand, going over the earth to teach its people the tillage of the soil. It was in the *Porphyria de Abstinentia.-Book II., sec. 5.

season of spring grass, too, that the band of heroes under Jason set out under the guidance of the dove, which was directed by the hand of Minerva, to regain the Golden Fleece. It was at the time

"When first the pleasing Pleiades appear,

And grass-green meads pronounced the summer near,
Of chiefs a valiant band, the flower of Greece,
Had planned the emprise of the golden fleece."

But leaving the shadowy records and traditions of buried years, let us turn to the aspect of the grass itself, for it is everywhere a thing of beauty, whether gladdening the mountain solitude with its angel smile, greening the soft slopes of the mossy glades, where the red deer wanders, and the child loves to play; whether gliding down into the deep, deep valleys, where the fountains murmur and the bees sing; whether clothing the sharp granite on the crown of the world, and making a cushion for the only flower which there looks up to God, or clinging, like an eternal friendship, to the roots of the gnarled trees, where in summer the rabbits burrow and the linnets sing, and in winter the storm-cloud gathers and the branches crash; while the hurricanes howl in chorus, scattering the growths of ages as they sweep the march of God.

In all its states and stages it is emblematic of human sentiments and human fate; especially is it emblematic both of life and death. All imagery fades into common place beside the imagery of the inspired volume; and there the grass is again and again the subject of similes and comparisons that reach deeper into the heart than it

is possible for the highest secular poetry to do. How sweet is the opening of the song of Moses in the 32nd of Deuteronomy-"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 because I will publish the name of the Lord." See the mournfulness of the climax in that reply to Hezekiah's prayer against the mocker Sennacherib, who had ravaged Israel-" Their inhabitants were of small power, they were dismayed and confounded; they were as the grass of the field, and as the green herb, as the grass on the housetops, and as corn blasted before it be grown up," 2 Kings xix. 26. There are more than forty such comparisons of the fate of man to the grass of the field, and each has its own peculiar power, adaptation, and use, in the precious words of divine wisdom, and serve to bind closer the relationship of man and Nature, which are so distinctly set forth in the grand revelation, that all that is of earth shall perish, even as the grass of the field, "which to day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven." If we dare not say that the grass is a symbol of God, we may say that in some measure its perennial verdure and plentifulness, and as the source of sustenance to myriads of creatures, represents the exhaustless affluence, the limitless energy, the boundless supervision and incessant exodus of benefits that combine in Him, "by whom, and through whom, and to whom are all things." It is most true, says Isaac Taylor, that the pious contemplatist finds in the sere herbage of the wilderness, and on the rugged and scorched surface of granite rocks, symbols enough of God; and he thinks

himself richly furnished with book, and lesson, and teacher, when he descries on his solitary way only a blade of grass.

VIII. PERORATUS.

It is worth noting here that, according to the teachings of Geology, the tribe of grasses was ushered into being only a short time previous to the appearance of man upon the earth. There are no grasses in the old red sandstone, none in the carboniferous rocks, rich as they are in other vegetable forms which gave their bulk to the formation of the coal measures. Myriads of ages went by, and myriads of plants succeeded race upon race, but not a grass was fashioned until of the entombed generations, as we find them, "God had made the pile complete." Then, and not till then, when the earth was to be the abode of man and the creatures that especially minister to his wants, God said, "let the earth bring forth grass;" and the black vallies became savannahs--the dreary plains prairies of grasses and wild flowers. The grasses were made especially for man, and that is man's title to draw from them sustenance for both body and mind. Hence the moral beauty of green things generally, best perceived through the aid of a healthy sentiment, and a mind ordered after the will of God. Dear to man are they as things which .solace him and beguile life of its harshness; which surround his home with poetry, and fill his heart with peace. How dreary would be the lot of man in a world where green things were not; with no green valleys dotted with homely sheep, no broad savannahs rustling a million golden