A rose
was good for scent, and a stream for sound and coolness; for the rest,
one was no more than leaves, the other no more than water; he could
not make anything else of them; and the divine power, which was
involved in their existence, having been all distilled away by him
into an independent Flora or Thetis, the poor leaves or waves were
left, in mere cold corporealness, to make the most of their being
discernibly red and soft, clear and wet, and unacknowledged in any
other power whatsoever.
Then, observe farther, the Greeks lived in the midst of the most
beautiful nature, and were as familiar with blue sea, clear air, and
sweet outlines of mountain, as we are with brick walls, black smoke,
and level fields. This perfect familiarity rendered all such scenes of
natural beauty unexciting, if not indifferent to them, by lulling and
overwearying the imagination as far as it was concerned with such
things; but there was another kind of beauty which they found it
required effort to obtain, and which, when thoroughly obtained, seemed
more glorious than any of this wild loveliness--the beauty of the
human countenance and form. This, they perceived, could only be
reached by continual exercise of virtue; and it was in Heaven's sight,
and theirs, all the more beautiful because it needed this self-denial
to obtain it.
Pages:
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142