itself not pleasing. The technical execution of the
picture is masterly. But our delight goes beyond any enjoyment of
the skill here exhibited, goes beyond even the satisfaction of the
senses in its color and composition. What the picture expresses is
not merely the visible aspect of this woman, but the painter's own
sympathy and appreciation. He saw a beauty in ugliness, a beauty to
which we were blind, for he felt the significance of her life, the
eternal rightness to herself of what she was. His joy in this inner
harmony has transfigured the object and made it beautiful. Beauty
penetrates deeper than grace and comeliness; it is not confined to the
pretty and agreeable. Indeed, beauty is not always immediately
pleasant, but is received often with pain. The emotion of pleasure,
which is regarded as the necessary concomitant of beauty, ensues as
we are able to merge ourselves in the experience and so come to feel
its ultimate harmony. What is commonly accepted as ugly, as
shocking or sordid, becomes beautiful for us so soon as we
apprehend its inner significance. Judged by the canons of formal
beauty, the sky-line of New York city, seen from the North River, is
ugly and distressing. But the responsive spirit, reaching ever
outward into new forms of feeling, can thrill at sight of those Titanic
structures out-topping the Palisades themselves, thrusting their
squareness adventurously into the smoke-grayed air, and telling the
triumph of man's mind over the forces of nature in this fulfillment of
the needs of irrepressible activity, this expression of tremendous
actuality and life. Not that the reaction is so definitely formulated in
the moment of experience; but this is something of what is felt. The
discovery of such a harmony is the entrance into fuller living. So it
is that the boundaries of beauty enlarge with the expansion of the
individual spirit.

To extend the boundaries of beauty by the revelation of new
harmonies is the function of art. With the ordinary man, the plane of
feeling, which is the basis of appreciation, is below the plane of his
attention as he moves through life from day to day. As a clock may
be ticking in the room quite unheeded, and then suddenly we hear it
because our attention is called to it; so only that emotion really
counts to us as experience which comes to our cognizance. When
once the ordinary man is made aware of the underlying plane of
feeling, the whole realm of appreciation is open