hildren.
First, I think children appealed to him because he was pre-eminently a
teacher, and he saw in their unspoiled minds the best material for him
to work upon. In later years one of his favourite recreations was to
lecture at schools on logic; he used to give personal attention to
each of his pupils, and one can well imagine with what eager
anticipation the children would have looked forward to the visits of a
schoolmaster who knew how to make even the dullest subjects
interesting and amusing.

Again, children appealed to his aesthetic faculties, for he was a keen
admirer of the beautiful in every form. Poetry, music, the drama, all
delighted him, but pictures more than all put together. I remember his
once showing me "The Lady with the Lilacs," which Arthur Hughes had
painted for him, and how he dwelt with intense pleasure on the
exquisite contrasts of colour which it contained--the gold hair of a
girl standing out against the purple of lilac-blossom. But with those
who find in such things as these a complete satisfaction of their
desire for the beautiful he had no sympathy; for no imperfect
representations of life could, for him, take the place of life itself,
life as God has made it--the babbling of the brook, the singing of the
birds, the laughter and sweet faces of the children. And yet,
recognising, as he did, what Mr. Pater aptly terms "the curious
perfection of the human form," in man, as in nature, it was the soul
that attracted him more than the body. His intense admiration, one
might almost call it adoration, for the white innocence and
uncontaminated spirituality of childhood emerges most clearly in
"Sylvie and Bruno." He says very little of the personal beauty of his
heroine; he might have asked, with Mr. Francis Thompson--

How can I tell what beauty is her dole,
Who cannot see her countenance for her soul?

So entirely occupied is he with her gentleness, her pity, her
sincerity, and her love.

Again, the reality of children appealed strongly to the simplicity and
genuineness of his own nature. I believe that he understood children
even better than he understood men and women; civilisation has made
adult humanity very incomprehensible, for convention is as a veil
which hides the divine spark that is in each of us, and so this
strange thing has come to be, that the imperfect mirrors perfection
more completely than the perfected, that we see more of God in the
child than in the man