392 ST. MARK’S REST

she bears just such a shell in her hand. Later writers, with whom the source of this symbolism was forgotten, accounted for it, partly by imaginative instinct, partly by fanciful invention concerning the nature and way of life of these creatures. But there is here yet a further reference, since from such shells along the Syrian coast was crushed out, sea-purple and scarlet, the juice of the Tyrian dye. And the power of sensual delight throned in the chief. places of each merchant city, decked her “stately bed”¹ with coverings whose tincture was the stain of that baptism.* The shells are empty now, devoured-lizards on land or sea-shore, are ever to such “inimicissimum genus”†-or wasted in the deep. For the ripples‡ that have thrown and left them on the sand are a type of the lusts of men, that leap up from the abyss, surge over the shore of life, and fall in swift ebb, leaving desolation behind.

232. Near the coiled adder is planted a withered human head. The sinews and skin of the neck spread, and clasp the ground-as a zoophyte does its rock-in hideous mimicry of an old tree’s knotted roots. Two feet and legs, torn off by the knee, lean on this head, one against the brow and the other behind. The scalp is bare and withered. These things catch one’s eye on the first glance at the picture, and though so painful, and made thus prominent as giving the key to a large part of its symbolism. Later Platonists-and among them those of the fifteenth century-developed from certain texts in the Timœus§ a doctrine concerning the mystical meaning of hair, which coincides with its significance to the vision of early (pre-Platonic) Greeks. As a tree has its roots in earth, and set thus, must patiently abide, bearing such fruit as the laws of

* The purple of Lydda was famous. Compare Fors Clavigera, Vol. VI., 1876 [Letter 64, § 1], and Deucalion, i. ch. vii. § 39.

† Pliny, Hist. Nat., viii. 39.

‡ Under the name of Salacia and Venilia. See St. August., Civ. Dei, vii. 22.

§ Plato, Tim., 75, 76.

¹ [Ezekiel xxiii. 41.]

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