summer-time Mary Anne submerges the cockroach trap within the pail! And
oh, let there be no Noah to that flood! Let none survive to tell another
tale; for, only when the chronicler of small-beer is dead shall we be able
to know men as men, heroes as heroes, poets as poets--instead of mere
centres of gossip, an inch of text to a yard of footnote. Then only may we
begin to talk of something worth the talking: not merely of how the great
man creased his trousers, and call it 'the study of character,' but of how
he was great, and whether it is possible to climb after him.

Talk, too, is so definite, so limited. The people we meet might seem so
wonderful, might mean such quaint and charming meanings sometimes, if they
would not talk. Like some delightfully bound old volume in a foreign
tongue, that looks like one of the Sibylline books, till a friend
translates the title and explains that it is a sixteenth-century law
dictionary: so are the men and women we meet. How interesting they might
be if they would not persist in telling us what they are about!

That, indeed, is the abiding charm of Nature. No sensible man can envy
Asylas, to whom the language of birds was as familiar as French _argot_ to
our young _décadents_. Think how terrible it would be if Nature could all
of a sudden learn English! That exquisite mirror of all our shifting moods
would be broken for ever. No longer might we coin the woodland into
metaphors of our own joys and sorrows. The birds would no longer flute to
us of lost loves, but of found worms; we should realise how terribly
selfish they are; we could never more quote 'Hark, hark, the lark at
heaven's gate sings,' or poetise with Mr. Patmore of 'the heavenly-minded
thrush.' And what awful voices some of those great red roses would have!
Yes, Nature is so sympathetic because she is so silent; because, when she
does talk, she talks in a language which we cannot understand, but only
guess at; and her silence allows us to hear her eternal meanings, which