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.