WATER-LILIES 103 
public square, and the holy invocation, “ Oh, the 
gem in the Lotus!” goes murmuring over hill 
and valley, like the sound of many bees. It is 
no unmeaning phrase, but an utterance of ar- 
dent desire to be absorbed into that Brahma 
whose emblem is the sacred flower. This mys- 
tic formula or “ mani” is imprinted on the pave- 
ment of the streets, it floats on flags from the 
temples, and the wealthy Buddhists maintain 
sculptor-missionaries, Old Mortalities of the 
water-lily, who, wandering to distant lands, 
carve the blessed words upon cliff and stone. 
Having got thus far into Orientalism, we can 
hardly expect to get out again without some 
slight entanglement in philology. Lily-pads. 
Whence pads ? No other leaf is identified with 
that singular monosyllable. Has our floating 
Lotus-leaf any connection with padding, or 
with a footpad? with the ambling pad of an 
abbot, or a paddle, or a paddock, or a padlock? 
with many-domed Padua proud, or with St. Pat- 
rick? Is the name derived from the Anglo-Saxon 
paad or petthian, or the Greek waréw? The ety- 
mologists are silent ; but was there ever a philo- 
logical trouble for which the Sanscrit could not 
afford at least a conjectural cure? A diction- 
ary of that venerable tongue is an ostrich’s 
stomach, which can crack the hardest etymo- 
logical nut. The Sanscrit name for the Lotus 
