Then farther, observe, I have said (and you will find it true, and
that to the uttermost) that, as all lovely art is rooted in virtue, so
it bears fruit of virtue, and is didactic in its own nature. It is
often didactic also in actually expressed thought, as Giotto's,
Michael Angelo's, Duerer's, and hundreds more; but that is not its
special function,--it is didactic chiefly by being beautiful; but
beautiful with haunting thought, no less than with form, and full of
myths that can be read only with the heart.
For instance, at this moment there is open beside me as I write, a
page of Persian manuscript, wrought with wreathed azure and geld, and
soft green, and violet, and ruby and scarlet, into one field of pure
resplendence. It is wrought to delight the eyes only; and does delight
them; and the man who did it assuredly had eyes in his head; but not
much more. It is not didactic art, but its author was happy: and it
will do the good, and the harm, that mere pleasure can do. But,
opposite me, is an early Turner drawing of the lake of Geneva, taken
about two miles from Geneva, on the Lausanne road, with Mont Blanc in
the distance. The old city is seen lying beyond the waveless waters,
veiled with a sweet misty veil of Athena's weaving: a faint light of
morning, peaceful exceedingly, and almost colourless, shed from behind
the Voirons, increases into soft amber along the slope of the Saleve,
and is just seen, and no more, on the fair warm fields of its summit,
between the folds of a white cloud that rests upon the grass, but
rises, high and towerlike, into the zenith of dawn above.
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