glaring latter-day faults. It is true we are equally cordially
hard on ourselves, and hate our vile bodies, when their aches and pains
intrude themselves between us and our soul's delight--for it is from the
Pagan, not the Christian, point of view that most lovers of beauty
regard life. And if a man's taste require costly gratification of it,
say by pictures, by marbles, by the thousand and one sumptuous trifles
that go to make the modern house beautiful, then that man is not
possessed of true taste, and he will be poorer in his palace than if he
dwelt ragged in Nature's lap, with all her riches, and those of his own
mind, at his disposal. For the true artistic sense impels one to work
always--and always to better and not worsen, what it touches. The
artistic sense that lazes, and lets other people work to gratify it, is
a bastard one, more, it is immoral, and neither bestows, nor receives,
grace. It cannot be fashioned, it may not be bought, this strange sense
of the inward beauty of things; nor a man's wife, nor his own soul, nor
his beautiful house shall teach it him, and he will never be one with
the Universe, with God, understanding all indeed, but not by written
word or speech, but by what was born in him. And though he may suffer
through it too, though to the ugly, the deaf, and the afflicted, such a
gift may seem bestowed in cruellest irony, still when all is said and
done I can think of no better summary of the whole than that given by
Philip Sydney's immortal lines on love. You all know them--

"He who for love hath undergone
The worst that can befall
Is happier thousandfold than he
Who ne'er hath loved at all ...
For in his soul a grace hath reigned
That nothing else could bring."

[Sidenote: Alfred C. Calmour is doubtful.]

The artistic temperament is both a blessing and a curse. It is a
blessing when it lifts a man's soul out of the slough of vulgar
commonplace, and turns his thoughts to the contemplation of noble
things, while at the same time it enables him to give something to the
world which it would not willingly lose, and for which he can obtain
adequate remuneration. But it (the artistic temperament) is a curse when
it tempts a man from that honest employment which provides him with
bread and butter, and leaves him a defeated, disappointed, and
heartbroken wretch, unable to return to that humble course of life which
had happily supplied his daily wants.

* * *