6. Now between these two states of equally natural growth, the point of difference that forced itself on me (and practically enough, in the work I had in my own wood), was not so much the withering and waste of the one, and the life of the other, as the thorniness and cruelty of the one, and the softness of the other. In Malham Cove, the stones of the brook were softer with moss than any silken pillow--the crowded oxalis leaves yielded to the pressure of the hand, and were not felt--the cloven {121} leaves of the Herb-Robert and orbed clusters of its companion overflowed every rent in the rude crags with living balm; there was scarcely a place left by the tenderness of the happy things, where one might not lay down one's forehead on their warm softness, and sleep. But in the waste and distressed ground, the distress had changed itself to cruelty. The leaves had all perished, and the bending saplings, and the wood of trust;--but the thorns were there, immortal, and the gnarled and sapless roots, and the dusty treacheries of decay. 7. Of which things you will find it good to consider also otherwise than botanically. For all these lower organisms suffer and perish, or are gladdened and flourish, under conditions which are in utter precision symbolical, and in utter fidelity representative, of the conditions which induce adversity and prosperity in the kingdoms of men: and the Eternal Demeter,--Mother, and Judge,--brings forth, as the herb yielding seed, so also the thorn and the thistle, not to herself, but _to thee_. 8. You have read the words of the great Law often enough;--have you ever thought enough of them to know the difference between these two appointed means of Distress? The first, the Thorn, is the type of distress _caused by crime_, changing the soft and breathing leaf into inflexible and wounding stubbornness. The second is the distress appointed to be the means and herald of good,--Thou shalt see the stubborn thistle bursting, into glossy purple, which outredden, all voluptuous garden roses. {122}