The Project Gutenberg EBook of Essays AEsthetical, by George Calvert

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Title: Essays AEsthetical

Author: George Calvert

Release Date: July 12, 2004 [EBook #12896]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS AESTHETICAL ***

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ESSAYS AESTHETICAL

by

GEORGE H. CALVERT

1875

CONTENTS.

I. THE BEAUTIFUL

II. WHAT IS POETRY?

III. STYLE

IV. DANTE AND HIS LATEST TRANSLATORS

V. SAINTE-BEUVE, THE CRITIC

VI. THOMAS CARLYLE

VII. ERRATA

VIII. NATIONAL DRAMA

IX. USEFULNESS OF ART

ESSAYS AESTHETICAL.

I.

THE BEAUTIFUL.

The Beautiful is one of the immortal themes. It cannot die; it grows
not old. On the same day with the sun was beauty born, and its life
runs parallel with the path of that great beautifier. As a subject for
exposition, it is at once easy and difficult: easy, from the affluence
of its resources; difficult, from the exactions which its own spirit
makes in the use of them.

Beauty--what is it? To answer this question were to solve more than
one problem. Shall we attempt what has been so often attempted and
never fully achieved? Such attempts are profitable. What though we
reach not the very heart of the mystery, we may get near enough to
hearken to the throb of its power, and our minds will be nerved by the
approximation.

To him who has the gift to feel its presence, nature teems with
beauty. Whithersoever the senses reach, whenever emotion kindles,
wherever the mind seeks food for its finer appetites, there is beauty.
It expects us at the dawn; it is about us, "an hourly neighbor,"
through the day; at night it looks down on us from star-peopled
immensities. Glittering on green lawns, glowing in sunsets, flashing
through storm-clouds, gilding our wakeful hours, irradiating sleep, it
is ever around, within us, eager to sweeten our labors, to purify our
thoughts. Nature is a vast treasure-house of beauty, whereof the key
is in the human heart.

But many are the hearts that have never opened far enough to disclose
the precious key enfolded