This feeling is increasing daily. Our deepest æsthetic emotions are,
we are beginning to recognise, connected with things which we do not,
cannot, possess in the vulgar sense. Nay, the deepest æsthetic
emotions depend, to an appreciable degree, on the very knowledge that
these things are either not such as money can purchase, or that they
are within the purchasing power of all. The sense of being shareable
by others, of being even shareable, so to speak, by other kinds of
utility, adds a very keen attraction to all beautiful things and
beautiful actions, and, of course, _vice versâ_. And things which are
beautiful, but connected with luxury and exclusive possession, come to
affect one as, in a way, _lacking harmonics_, lacking those additional
vibrations of pleasure which enrich impressions of beauty by
impressions of utility and kindliness.
Thus, after enjoying the extraordinary lovely tints--oleander pink,
silver-grey, and most delicate citron--of the plaster which covers the
commonest cottages, the humblest chapels, all round Genoa, there is
something _short and acid_ in the pleasure one derives from equally
charming colours in expensive dresses. Similarly, in Italy, much of
the charm of marble, of the sea-cave shimmer, of certain palace-yards
and churches, is due to the knowledge that this lovely, noble
substance is easy to cut and quarried in vast quantities hard by: no
wretched rarity like diamonds and rubies, which diminish by the worth
of a family's yearly keep if only the cutter cuts one hair-breadth
wrong!
Again, is not one reason why antique sculpture awakens a state of mind
where stoicism, humaneness, simplicity, seem nearer possibilities--is
not one reason that it shows us the creature in its nakedness, in such
beauty and dignity as it can get through the grace of birth only?
There is no need among the gods for garments from silken Samarkand,
for farthingales of brocade and veils of Mechlin lace like those of
the wooden Madonnas of Spanish churches; no need for the ruffles and
plumes of Pascal's young beau, showing thereby the number of his
valets. The same holds good of trees, water, mountains, and their
representation in poetry and painting; their dignity takes no account
of poverty or riches. Even the lilies of the field please us, not
because they toil not neither do they spin, but because they do not
require, while Solomon does, that other folk should toil and spin to
make them glorious.