A GARDEN BY THE SEA 21 



" We make the acquaintance of any individual exist- 

 ence under an immense number of different aspects, and 

 it is tlie sum of all these aspects which constitutes that 

 existence to us. A Snowdrop, for instance, is not to me 

 merely such a figure as a painter might give me by copy- 

 ing the flower when placed so that its loveliness shall be 

 best apparent, but a curious mental combination or selec- 

 tion from the figures which the flower may present when 

 placed in every possible position, and in every aspect 

 which it has worn from birth to grave, and coloured by 

 all the associations which have chanced to cling around 

 it. To the bodily eye which beholds it for the first time 

 it might be of no consequence what lay within the petals, 

 though even then the imagination would be whispering 

 some solution of the secret ; but to the eye of mind, 

 when the flower has been often seen, that hidden green 

 and yellow which is necessary to complete the harmony 

 becomes distinctly visible — visible, that is, in that strange, 

 indefinite way in which all things, however apparently 

 incompatible, seem present and blended together when 

 the imaginative faculty is at work. The common Star 

 of Bethlehem {Ornithogalum umbellatum) is a good illus- 

 tration of the working of this principle. When I look 

 at the beautiful silver-white of the inner surface of the 

 petals, my mind is always dwelling upon and rejoicing 

 in the fact that their outer side is green, though of 

 that green outside I cannot see a hair's breadth. Again, 

 we find the same principle at work in the feeling which 

 compelled the old sculptors to finish the hidden side of 

 the statue. They said, * For the gods are everywhere.' " 



There are people of whom we say (indeed, it is pos- 

 sibly true of everyone) — 'k has the cynics — that the more 

 intimately we know them, and the longer we know them, 

 the more we see to Jove and admire. So it is with a 

 really beautiful plant, and for this reason they who would 

 obtain all the possible pleasure and beauty from their 



