Why should Nature reveal her most priceless secrets to man, since as yet, his highest attainment is a disbelief in all things beyond his finite wisdom, and a cavilling at what he calls the useless machinery of organic life? Nature is as shy as she is beautiful; generous when trusted, but niggardly when discredited. How shall the wilfully blind expect to see into her mysteries, or the wilfully deaf hear the lilt of her charming? Below the terrace lay the garden beds, wrapt about in a dreamy haze, out of which the crescent moon, set high in the intense blue of the heavens, evoked spectral gleams of gold and silver as it fell athwart the yellow daffodils, hanging their heavy heads down to their shrouding green sheath-like leaves; or where the sweet narcissus raised its white disk, distilling its rich perfume far into the night, and recalling the beautiful Boeotian youth, whose tragic fate seemed written on each silver petal. "Narcissi, fairest of them all, Who gaze on their eyes in the stream's recess, Till they die of their own dear loveliness." Here, too, blossomed the luscious double violet, hidden beneath its close growing leaves, mingling its dainty perfume with the more pungent exhalations of the tiny musk plant and lily-of-the-valley, while the pale blue-eyed forget-me-not was lost in the shadows, as were the star of Bethlehem, and the delicate classic cups of the crocus, only their bolder yellow rims catching, now and then, a fleeting moonbeam. A grove of sycamore trees threw up their graceful branches against the luminous darkness, while the chestnuts swayed their half-opened downy pink and white buds, and the maples fluttered their long, tendril-like pods, cased in verdant green, and as rhythmical as lightly strung Eastern prayer-beads. The faint early verdure of the lilac was just discernible, and in one of the dark oak-trees a little mother bird, wakened by the brilliant moonlight, crooned out a plaintive note to her mate, who answered her by the soft fluttering of his brown wings. And then all was still, but not silent; for the great wonderful night is filled with the sweet harmonies of the invisible world, whose cadences are too faint and tender to be heard among the clarion chords of the day, but which possess an infinitude of euphony that seems borrowed from the heavenly choirs of the New Jerusalem.