se,
emergent, a slender, pensive, fragile flower,[28] whose small, dark,
purple-fringed bell hangs down and shudders over the icy cleft that it
has cloven, as if partly wondering at its own recent grave, and partly
dying of very fatigue after its hard-won victory; we shall be, or we
ought to be, moved by a totally different impression of loveliness
from that which we receive among the dead ice and the idle clouds:
there is now uttered to us a call for sympathy, now offered to us an
image of moral purpose and achievement, which, however unconscious or
senseless the creature may indeed be that so seems to call, cannot be
heard without affection, nor contemplated without worship, by any of
us whose heart is rightly turned, or whose mind is clearly and surely
sighted.

[28] Soldanella Alpina. I think it is the only Alpine flower which
actually pierces snow, though I have seen gentians filling thawed
hoof-prints. Crocuses are languid till they have had sun for a day or
two. But the soldanella enjoys its snow, at first, and afterwards its
fields. I have seen it make a pasture look like a large lilac silk gown.

55. It has been well shown by Dr. Herbert, that many plants are found
alone on a certain soil or sub-soil in a wild state, not because such
soil is favourable to them, but because they alone are capable of
existing on it, and because all dangerous rivals are by its
inhospitality removed. Now if we withdraw the plant from this
position, which it hardly endures, and supply it with the earth and
maintain about it the temperature that it delights in; withdrawing
from it, at the same time, all rivals, which in such conditions Nature
would have thrust upon it, we shall indeed obtain a magnificently
developed example of the plant, colossal in size, and splendid in
organization; but we shall utterly lose in it that moral ideal which
is dependent on its right fulfilment of its appointed functions. It
was intended and created by the Deity for the covering of those lonely
spots where no other plant could live. It has been thereto endowed
with courage and strength, and capacities of endurance; its character
and glory are not therefore in the gluttonous and idle feeding of its
own over luxuriance, at the expense of other creatures utterly
destroyed and rooted out for its good alone; but in its right doing of
its hard duty, and forward climbing into those spots of forlorn hope
where it alone can bear witness to the kindness and