stery of the great Babylon--the dimness of the
sealed eye and soul; but do not let us confuse these with the glorious
mystery of the things which the angels "desire to look into," or with
the dimness which, even before the clear eye and open soul, still rests
on sealed pages of the eternal volume.

Sec. 5. And going down from this great truth to the lower truths which are
types of it in smaller matters, we shall find, that as soon as people
try honestly to see all they can of anything, they come to a point where
a noble dimness begins. They see more than others; but the consequence
of their seeing more is, that they feel they cannot see all; and the
more intense their perception, the more the crowd of things which they
_partly_ see will multiply upon them; and their delight may at last
principally consist in dwelling on this cloudy part of their prospect,
somewhat casting away or aside what to them has become comparatively
common, but is perhaps the sum and substance of all that other people
see in the thing, for the utmost subtleties and shadows and glancings of
it cannot be caught but by the most practised vision. And as a delicate
ear rejoices in the slighter and more modulated passages of sound which
to a blunt ear are utterly monotonous in their quietness, or
unintelligible in their complication, so, when the eye is exquisitely
keen and clear, it is fain to rest on grey films of shade, and wandering
rays of light, and intricacies of tender form, passing over hastily, as
unworthy or commonplace, what to a less educated sense appears the whole
of the subject.[33] In painting, this progress of the eye is marked
always by one consistent sign--its sensibility, namely, to effects of
_gradation_ in light and color, and habit of looking for them, rather
even than for the signs of the essence of the subject. It will, indeed,
see more of that essence than is seen by other eyes; and its choice of
the points to be seized upon will be always regulated by that special
sympathy which we have above examined as the motive of the Turnerian
picturesque; but yet, the more it is cultivated, the more of light and
color it will perceive, the less of substance.

[Illustration: J. Ruskin. 1 2 3 4
26. The Law of Evanescence.]

Sec. 6. Thus, when the eye is quite uncultivated, it sees that a man is a
man, and a face is a face, but has no idea what shadows or lights fall
upon the form or features. Cultivate it to so