The Snowdrop 



green lines and stamens are scarcely to 

 be seen. Where was the necessity for 

 troubling about them if the flower was 

 never intended to be looked at upside 

 downwards ? The answer, I think, must 

 be this. We make the acquaintance of 

 any individual existence under an immense 

 number of different aspects, and it is the 

 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 copying 

 the flower when placed so that its loveli- 

 ness shall be best apparent, but a curious 

 mental combination or selection 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 associa- 

 tions which have chanced to cling around 

 it. To the bodily eye which beholds it 

 for the first time, it might be of no conse- 

 quence what lay within the petals, though 

 even then the imagination would be whis- 

 pering 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 



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