from
it."

"I call that the fanaticism of sympathy," said Will, impetuously. "You
might say the same of landscape, of poetry, of all refinement. If you
carried it out you ought to be miserable in your own goodness, and turn
evil that you might have no advantage over others. The best piety is
to enjoy--when you can. You are doing the most then to save the
earth's character as an agreeable planet. And enjoyment radiates. It
is of no use to try and take care of all the world; that is being taken
care of when you feel delight--in art or in anything else. Would you
turn all the youth of the world into a tragic chorus, wailing and
moralizing over misery? I suspect that you have some false belief in
the virtues of misery, and want to make your life a martyrdom." Will
had gone further than he intended, and checked himself. But Dorothea's
thought was not taking just the same direction as his own, and she
answered without any special emotion--

"Indeed you mistake me. I am not a sad, melancholy creature. I am
never unhappy long together. I am angry and naughty--not like Celia: I
have a great outburst, and then all seems glorious again. I cannot
help believing in glorious things in a blind sort of way. I should be
quite willing to enjoy the art here, but there is so much that I don't
know the reason of--so much that seems to me a consecration of ugliness
rather than beauty. The painting and sculpture may be wonderful, but
the feeling is often low and brutal, and sometimes even ridiculous.
Here and there I see what takes me at once as noble--something that I
might compare with the Alban Mountains or the sunset from the Pincian
Hill; but that makes it the greater pity that there is so little of the
best kind among all that mass of things over which men have toiled so."

"Of course there is always a great deal of poor work: the rarer things
want that soil to grow in."

"Oh dear," said Dorothea, taking up that thought into the chief current
of her anxiety; "I see it must be very difficult to do anything good.
I have often felt since I have been in Rome that most of our lives
would look much uglier and more bungling than the pictures, if they
could be put on the wall."

Dorothea parted her lips again as if she were going to say more, but
changed her mind and paused.

"You are too young--it is an anachronism for you to have such
thoughts," said Will, energetically, with a quick shake of the head
habitual to him.