2 4 o A GARDEN DIARY 



the same serene, the same absolutely indifferent 

 toleration. 



It is not even as if her greater secrets were 

 reserved for the wiser and the more erudite of 

 her followers, and were withheld from those that 

 were less erudite, for the same partial revelations, 

 the same profound concealments, seem, so far as 

 can be ascertained, to be allotted to all alike. 

 The Sphinx which looks up out of the heart of 

 a toadflax or a columbine is the same Sphinx 

 that speaks out of the stilly night, out of the 

 clouds, out of the primaeval rocks, out of the 

 stars, and out of the inviolable sea. " And 

 this," she possibly murmurs, " is my lesson which 

 I give to you. Cease to occupy yourself wholly 

 with the shows of the surface, the toys of to-day; 

 things which come and go, which pass and end in 

 an hour. Look a little deeper. Follow any of 

 these brown roots down to where the motherly 

 earth receives them, and the dews and the rain 

 nourish them, and all the complicated chemistry 

 of my workshops have been at work from the 

 beginning to bring them to perfection. On and 

 on, deeper and deeper yet, towards that vaster 

 laboratory across whose threshold even I have 

 never glanced. There, in that incredible remote- 

 ness, thou and I ; the small brown worm, and the 

 goodly oak ; the old, worn-out worlds, and the 

 new, as yet only half-born stars ; all the gay 

 shows of this little green earth, and all the un- 



