When I try to account for this effect I find no difficulty about it.
I find that, as a rule, when a thing is a wonder to us it is not because
of what we see in it, but because of what others have seen in it. We get
almost all our wonders at second hand. We are eager to see any
celebrated thing--and we never fail of our reward; just the deep
privilege of gazing upon an object which has stirred the enthusiasm or
evoked the reverence or affection or admiration of multitudes of our race
is a thing which we value; we are profoundly glad that we have seen it,
we are permanently enriched from having seen it, we would not part with
the memory of that experience for a great price. And yet that very
spectacle may be the Taj. You cannot keep your enthusiasms down, you
cannot keep your emotions within bounds when that soaring bubble of
marble breaks upon your view. But these are not your enthusiasms and
emotions--they are the accumulated emotions and enthusiasms of a thousand
fervid writers, who have been slowly and steadily storing them up in your
heart day by day and year by year all your life; and now they burst out
in a flood and overwhelm you; and you could not be a whit happier if they
were your very own.
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