end of the world let us say, or merely in the mews to the back, has so
very much too little as to have none at all, which is another way of
diminishing possible enjoyment. There seems, moreover, to be a certain
queer virtue in mere emptiness, in mere negation. We require a _margin_ of
_nothing_ round everything that is to charm us; round our impressions as
well as round the material objects which can supply them; for without it
we lose all outline, and begin to feel vaguely choked.

Compare the pleasure of a picture tucked away in a chapel or sacristy
with the plethoric weariness of a whole Louvre or National Gallery. Nay,
remember the vivid delight of some fine bit of tracery round a single
door or window, as in the cathedral of Dol or the house of Tristan
l'Hermite at Tours; or of one of those Ionic capitals which you
sometimes find built into quite an uninteresting house in Rome (there is
one almost opposite St. Angelo, and another near Tor dei Specchi, Tower
of the Mirrors, delightful name!).

That question of going to see the thing, instead of seeing it drearily
among ten thousand other things equally lovely--O weariness
unparalleled of South Kensington or Cluny!--that question of the
agreeable little sense of deliberate pilgrimage (pilgrimage to a small
shrine perhaps in one's memory), leads me to another explanation of
what I must call the "hotel room phenomenon."

I maintain that there is a zest added to one's pleasure in beautiful
things by the effort and ingenuity (unless too exhausting) expended in
eliminating the impressions which might detract from them. One likes the
hotel room just because some of the furniture has been sent away into
the passage or wheeled into corners; one enjoys pleasant things
additionally for having arranged them to advantage in one's mind. It is
just the reverse with the rooms in a certain palace I sometimes have the
privilege of entering, where every detail is worked--furniture,
tapestries, embroideries, majolica, and flowers--into an overwhelming
Wagner symphony of loveliness. There is a genuine Leonardo in one of
those rooms, and truly I almost wish it were in a whitewashed lobby. And
in coming out of all that perfection I sometimes feel a kind of relief
on getting into the empty, uninteresting street. My thoughts, somehow,
fetch a long breath....

These are not the sentiments of the superfine. But then I venture to
think that the dose of fineness which is, so to speak, _super