240 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 primzeval 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- 
