The year has more than run its complete round since these loosely
connected jottings were begun, so that it is high time that they shut
the cover down upon themselves, and withdrew into a corner.
Diary-keeping, like knitting, like whittling, like any other of the
minor distractions, begins often with more or less effort, yet after a
time becomes, first a habit, finally almost a necessity. Entered upon
without any particular motive, it creates a place for itself, it fills a
void, it becomes a solace. The practice of the diarist varies, of
course, almost infinitely. It may mean merely that conscientious daily
record, to which alone the words “journal,” “diary,” “day-book” properly
belong, or it may enlarge its scope until it covers all those looser,
and necessarily more intermittent outpourings, in which most of us from
time to time indulge, whether for our weal or our woe depends largely
upon circumstances.
One merit it certainly has. Few mediums of thought are equally fluid;
few admit of greater variety; more diversity of mood; more ranging from
topic to topic. Possibly the most satisfactory of all its developments
is when it enables us to follow some well-beloved pursuit, keeping pace
with its minutest ramifications, losing ourselves, as it were, in its
existence, and thereby evading half those irritating points, half those
wounding asperities that belong to every human lot. Amongst such beloved
and healing pursuits that of gardening stands prominently forward. I
have been assured that there are superior persons by whom it is held in
exceedingly low repute; who regard it as a symptom, indeed, of mental
degeneration, and, as a resource, below stamp-collecting, and about on a
par with the acquisition of the idiot stitch. Were it my lot to be
acquainted with any such superior persons there is one punishment that I
must confess I should dearly love to bestow upon them; which is that
they should first desperately need the comfort of such a solace, and
afterwards--upon due probation and penitence--that they should come to
find it! Few ideas are more bigoted, more essentially narrow and
foolish, than this one about the elevating, or the non-elevating effect
of our pursuits. It is upon a par with the equally pestilent notion that
it is the narrowness of our lives, or the obscurity of our lots, that
keeps our swelling souls from greatness. Greatness, like genius, is
dependent upon no such trumpery circumstances, but is a self-existent
quality, not to be concealed though it were hidden under all the rocks
of Mount Ararat, or had every wave in the Atlantic piled upon its head.
Let us then assert, roundly assert, that no pursuit--certainly no
natural pursuit--can with any accuracy be called petty. It is, moreover,
the great advantage of all such out-of-door pursuits that they enable
their followers to confer with Nature at first hand, and not through any
intermediary. This is recognised in the case of what are called the
higher natural pursuits, but it is equally true of all. Like many other
potentates Nature has her unpleasant, even her very dangerous aspects,
but it is one of her best points that she is no respecter of persons.
She is an autocrat, and an autocrat in whose eyes all subjects stand
upon precisely the same level. At her court there is no superior, and no
inferior. Geologist, botanist, zoologist, horticulturist--beetle-hunter,
stone-breaker, weed-picker, crab-catcher--it matters not what we call
ourselves, or what others call us, so long as it is herself alone we
follow, she receives us all alike. Within those imperial and open-doored
halls of hers all rapidly find their own level; all may speak to her on
occasion face to face; all present their own credentials, and all are
accepted by her with 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 primæval 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
remoteness, 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 unknown things of the
immeasurable Cosmos, meet, and are on a level. There is neither larger
or smaller there, neither younger or older, neither wiser or more
foolish, neither less or more important. For out of it came that by
means of which all this that we see and know has come. There, once for
all, was uttered that spell of which this huge teeming universe is but
the outcome. There Life herself was born, and it may be therefore other
powers, greater and more wide-embracing than even Life herself. But of
what that spell consists, or what the name of it is, no bird, or beast,
or man, or possibly other creature, has hitherto so much as even begun
to guess.”