He inherits in direct affiliation their blood and inward organization, mental and moral.[1142] A bud, collected in their forest, before the age of refinement, impoverishment, and decay, has been transported into a similar and remote nursery, where a tragic and militant regime is permanently established.

There the primitive germ is preserved intact and transmitted from one generation to another, renewed and invigorated by interbreeding.

Finally, at the last stage of its growth, it springs out of the ground and develops magnificently, blooming the same as ever, and producing the same fruit as on the original stem.

Modern cultivation and French gardening have pruned away but very few of its branches and blunted a few of its thorns: its original texture, inmost substance, and spontaneous development have not changed.

The soil of France and of Europe, however, broken up by revolutionary tempests, is more favorable to its roots than the worn-out fields of the Middle Ages and there it grows by itself, without being subject, like its Italian ancestors, to rivalry with its own species; nothing checks the growth; it may absorb all the juices of the ground, all the air and sunshine of the region, and become the Colossus which the ancient plants, equally deep-rooted and certainly as absorbent, but born in a less friable soil and more crowded together, could not provide.
II.