But this is not
the case at all; because there is a beauty of age which is often, in
its way, a more impressive and noble thing than the beauty of youth.
And there is, too, the beauty of expression, a far more subtle and
moving thing than mere beauty of feature: we must have often seen, for
instance, a face which by all the canons of beauty might be pronounced
admirable, yet the effect of which is wholly unattractive; while, on
the other hand, we have known faces that, from some ruggedness or want
of proportion, seemed at first sight even repellent, which have yet
come to hold for one an extraordinary quality of attractiveness, from
the beauty of the soul being somehow revealed in them, and are yet as
remote from any sense of desire as the beauty of a tree or a crag.
And then, again, in dealing with the beauty of nature, I have heard
philosophers say that the appeal which it makes is traceable to a sense
of prosperity or well-being; and that the love of landscape has grown
up out of the sense of satisfaction with which our primaeval ancestors
saw a forest full of useful timber and crowded with edible game. But
that again is entirely contradicted by my experience.
I went to-day on a vague walk in the country, taking attractive by-ways
and field-paths, and came in the course of the afternoon to a lonely
village among wide pastures which I had never visited before.
Pages:
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168