disintegrate, and distribute itself among the ideas of the suggested
things, leaving the expressive object bare of all interest, like the
letters of a printed page.

The courtiers of Philip the Second probably did not regard his
rooms at the Escurial as particularly interesting, but simply as
small, ugly, and damp. The character which we find in them and
which makes us regard them as eminently expressive of whatever
was sinister in the man, probably did not strike them. They knew
the king, and had before them words, gestures, and acts enough in
which to read his character. But all these living facts are wanting to
our experience; and it is the suggestion of them in their
unrealizable vagueness that fills the apartments of the monarch
with such pungent expression. It is not otherwise with all emphatic
expressiveness -- moonlight and castle moats, minarets and
cypresses, camels filing through the desert -- such images get their
character from the strong but misty atmosphere of sentiment and
adventure which clings about them. The profit of travel, and the
extraordinary charm of all visible relics of antiquity, consists in the
acquisition of images in which to focus a mass of discursive
knowledge, not otherwise felt together. Such images are concrete
symbols of much latent experience, and the deep roots of
association give them the same hold upon our attention which
might be secured by a fortunate form or splendid material.

_Cost as an element of effect._

Sec. 53. There is one consideration which often adds much to the
interest with which we view an object, but which we might be
virtuously inclined not to admit among aesthetic values. I mean
cost. Cost is practical value expressed in abstract terms, and from
the price of anything we can often infer what relation it has to the
desires and efforts of mankind. There is no reason why cost, or the
circumstances which are its basis, should not, like other practical
values, heighten the tone of consciousness, and add to the pleasure
with which we view an object. In fact, such is our daily experience;
for great as is the sensuous beauty of gems, their rarity and price
adds an expression of distinction to them, which they would never
have if they were cheap.

The circumstance that makes the appreciation of cost often
unaesthetic is the abstractness of that quality. The price of an
object is an algebraic symbol, it is a conventional term, invented to
facilitate our operation