f what
is comfortable and sensible. Imagination is what really matters. It is not
enough to have solid emotions; one ought not to be too reasonable about
emotions. The thing is to care in an unreasonable and rapturous way about
beautiful things, and not to know why one cares. That is the point of
things which are simply beautiful and nothing else,--that you feel it isn't
all capable of explanation."

"But isn't that rather sentimental?" said Rose.

"No, no, it's just the opposite," said Father Payne. "Sentiment is when one
understands and exaggerates an emotion; beauty isn't that--it is something
mysterious and inexplicable; it makes you bow the head and worship. Take
the sort of thing you may see on the coast of Italy--a blue sea, with gray
and orange cliffs falling steeply down into deep water; a gap, with a
clustering village, coming down, tier by tier, to the sea's edge; fantastic
castles on spires of rock, thickets and dingles running down among the
clefts and out on the ledges, and perhaps a glimpse of pale, fantastic
hills behind. No one could make it or design it; but every line, every
blending colour, all combine to give you the sense of something
marvellously and joyfully contrived, and made for the richness and
sweetness of it. That is the sort of moment when I feel the overwhelming
beauty and nearness of God--everything done on a vast scale, which floods
mind and heart with utter happiness and wonder. Anything so overpoweringly
joyful and delicious and useless as all that _must_ come out of a
fulness of joy. The sharp cliffs mean some old cutting and slashing, the
blistering and burning of the earth; and yet those old rents have been
clothed and mollified by some power that finds it worth while to do it--and
it isn't done for you or me, either--there must be treasures of loveliness
going on hidden for centuries in tropic forests. It's done for the sake of
doing it; and we are granted a glimpse of it, just to show us perhaps that
we are right to adore it, and to try in our clumsy way to make beautiful
things too. That is why I envy the musician, because he creates beauty more
directly then any other mind--and the best kind of poetry is of the same
order."

"But isn't there a danger in all this?" said Lestrange. "No, I don't want
to say anything priggish," he added, seeing a contraction of Father Payne's
brows; "I only want to say what I feel. I recognise the fascination of it
as much as anyone can--but isn'