tation, such as the famous passage on
Mona Lisa, and that other in which Botticelli's strange conception of the
Virgin is so strangely set forth. From the present volume it is
difficult to select any one passage in preference to another as specially
characteristic of Mr. Pater's treatment. This, however, is worth quoting
at length. It contains a truth eminently suitable for our age:

That the end of life is not action but contemplation--_being_ as
distinct from _doing_--a certain disposition of the mind: is, in some
shape or other, the principle of all the higher morality. In poetry,
in art, if you enter into their true spirit at all, you touch this
principle in a measure; these, by their sterility, are a type of
beholding for the mere joy of beholding. To treat life in the spirit
of art is to make life a thing in which means and ends are identified:
to encourage such treatment, the true moral significance of art and
poetry. Wordsworth, and other poets who have been like him in ancient
or more recent times, are the masters, the experts, in this art of
impassioned contemplation. Their work is not to teach lessons, or
enforce rules, or even to stimulate us to noble ends, but to withdraw
the thoughts for a while from the mere machinery of life, to fix them,
with appropriate emotions, on the spectacle of those great facts in
man's existence which no machinery affects, 'on the great and
universal passions of men, the most general and interesting of their
occupations, and the entire world of nature'--on 'the operations of
the elements and the appearances of the visible universe, on storm and
sunshine, on the revolutions of the seasons, on cold and heat, on loss
of friends and kindred, on injuries and resentments, on gratitude and
hope, on fear and sorrow.' To witness this spectacle with appropriate
emotions is the aim of all culture; and of these emotions poetry like
Wordsworth's is a great nourisher and stimulant. He sees nature full
of sentiment and excitement; he sees men and women as parts of nature,
passionate, excited, in strange grouping and connection with the
grandeur and beauty of the natural world:--images, in his own words,
'of men suffering, amid awful forms and powers.'

Certainly the real secret of Wordsworth has never been better expressed.
After having read and reread Mr. Pater's essay--for it requires
re-reading--one re