discover an early flower, however many miles they cover in their country walks.  They take no pleasure in finding a wild-strawberry flower in January or a campion blossom in the first week in February.  They are as indifferent to Nature as Nature is to them.  The honeysuckle that breaks out with leaves as with green flames; the thrust of the leaves of the wild hyacinth under the trees, like the return of youth; the flowering of the elm; the young moon like a white bird with spread wings in the afternoon sky; the golden journey of Orion and his dog across the heavens by night—­these things, they feel, are not interwoven with man’s fate.  They were before him, and they will be after him.  Therefore, he cares more for his little brick house in the suburbs, which will at least be changed when he goes.  I do not suggest that anyone consciously adopts a philosophy of this kind.  But most of us are undoubtedly a little offended at some time in our lives when we realise that Nature has so little regard for our passions and our tears.  She is a consoler, but it is on her own terms.  Matthew Arnold found the secret of life in becoming as resigned to obedience as the stars and the tide.  Who knows but, if we do this, Nature may be found to care after all?  But she does not care in the way in which most of us want her to care.  The religious discovered that long ago.  They found that Nature was guilty of neutrality in human affairs if they did not go further and suspect her of enmity.  It is only when philosophy has been added to religion that men have been able to reconcile without gloom the indifference of Nature with the idea of the love of God.  And even the religious and the philosophers are puzzled by the spectacle of the worm that writhes on the garden path while the robin pecks at it, triumphant in his fatness and praising the fine weather.

XVII

EGGS:  AN EASTER HOMILY

Having decided to write on Easter, I took out a volume of The Encyclopædia Britannica in order to make up the subject of eggs, and the first entry under “Egg” that met my eye was: 

“EGG, AUGUSTUS LEOPOLD (1816-1863), English painter, was born on the 2nd of May, 1816, in London, where his father carried on business as a gun-maker.”

I wish I had known about Augustus five years ago.  I should like to have celebrated the centenary of an egg somewhere else than in a London tea-shop.  Augustus Leopold Egg seems to have spent a life in keeping with his name.  He was taught drawing by Mr Sass, and in later years was a devotee of amateur theatricals, making a memorable appearance, as we should expect of an Egg, in a play called Not so Bad as We Seem.  He also appears to have devoted a great part of his life to painting bad eggs, if we may judge by the titles of his most famous pictures—­Buckingham Rebuffed, Queen Elizabeth discovers she is no longer young, Peter the Great sees Catherine for the First