d noble than the verse itself. The heroes are virtuous.
There is none of importance who is not admirable in his way. The
palaces, the arms, the horses, the sacrifices, are always excellent.
The women are always stately and beautiful. The ancestry and the
history of every one are honourable and good. The whole Homeric
world is clean, clear, beautiful, and providential, and no small part
of the perennial charm of the poet is that he thus immerses us in an
atmosphere of beauty; a beauty not concentrated and reserved for
some extraordinary sentiment, action, or person, but permeating
the whole and colouring the common world of soldiers and sailors,
war and craft, with a marvellous freshness and inward glow. There
is nothing in the associations of life in this world or in another to
contradict or disturb our delight. All is beautiful, and beautiful
through and through.

Something of this quality meets us in all simple and idyllic
compositions. There is, for instance, a popular demand that stories
and comedies should "end well." The hero and heroine must be
young and handsome; unless they die, -- which is another matter, --
they must not in the end be poor. The landscape in the play must
be beautiful; the dresses pretty; the plot without serious mishap. A
pervasive presentation of pleasure must give warmth and ideality
to the whole. In the proprieties of social life we find the same
principle; we study to make our surroundings, manner, and
conversation suggest nothing but what is pleasing. We hide the
ugly and disagreeable portion of our lives, and do not allow the
least hint of it to come to light upon festive and public occasions.
Whenever, in a word, a thoroughly pleasing effect is found, it is
found by the expression, as well as presentation, of what is in itself
pleasing -- and when this effect is to be produced artificially, we
attain it by the suppression of all expression that is not suggestive
of something good.

If our consciousness were exclusively aesthetic, this kind of
expression would be the only one allowed in art or prized in nature.
We should avoid as a shock or an insipidity, the suggestion of
anything not intrinsically beautiful. As there would be no values
not aesthetic, our pleasure could never be heightened by any other
kind of interest. But as contemplation is actually a luxury in our
lives, and things interest us chiefly on passionate and practical
grounds, the accumulation of values too exclusivel