lver-grey, and most delicate citron--of the plaster which covers the
commonest cottages, the humblest chapels, all round Genoa, there is
something _short and acid_ in the pleasure one derives from equally
charming colours in expensive dresses. Similarly, in Italy, much of
the charm of marble, of the sea-cave shimmer, of certain palace-yards
and churches, is due to the knowledge that this lovely, noble
substance is easy to cut and quarried in vast quantities hard by: no
wretched rarity like diamonds and rubies, which diminish by the worth
of a family's yearly keep if only the cutter cuts one hair-breadth
wrong!

Again, is not one reason why antique sculpture awakens a state of mind
where stoicism, humaneness, simplicity, seem nearer possibilities--is
not one reason that it shows us the creature in its nakedness, in such
beauty and dignity as it can get through the grace of birth only?
There is no need among the gods for garments from silken Samarkand,
for farthingales of brocade and veils of Mechlin lace like those of
the wooden Madonnas of Spanish churches; no need for the ruffles and
plumes of Pascal's young beau, showing thereby the number of his
valets. The same holds good of trees, water, mountains, and their
representation in poetry and painting; their dignity takes no account
of poverty or riches. Even the lilies of the field please us, not
because they toil not neither do they spin, but because they do not
require, while Solomon does, that other folk should toil and spin to
make them glorious.

XII.

Again, do we not prefer the books which deal with habits simpler than
our own? Do we not love the Odyssey partly because of Calypso weaving
in her cave, and Nausicaa washing the clothes with her maidens? Does
it not lend additional divinity that Christianity should have arisen
among peasants and handicraftsmen?

Nay more, do we not love certain objects largely because they are
useful; boats, nets, farm carts, ploughs; discovering therein a grace
which actually exists, but which might else have remained unsuspected?
And do we not feel a certain lack of significance and harmony of
fulness of aesthetic quality in our persons when we pass in our
idleness among people working in the fields, masons building, or
fishermen cleaning their boats and nets; whatever beauty such things
may have being enhanced by their being common and useful.

In this manner our aesthetic instinct strains vaguely after a double
change: n