ople who probably did not think about
it as art at all. Fancy Homer going in for questions of form! It is
always, I believe, a sign of decadence when formalism begins. It is just
like religion, which starts with a teacher who has an overwhelming sense
of the beauty of holiness; and then that degenerates into theology.
These young men are to art what the theologians are to religion.
They lose sight of the object of the whole thing in codification and
definition. My own idea of a great artist is a man who finds beauty so
hopelessly attractive and desirable that he can't restrain his speech.
It all has to come out; he cannot hold his peace. And then a number of
people begin to see that it was what they had been vaguely admiring and
desiring all the time; and then a few highly intellectual people think
that they can analyse it, and produce the same effects by applying their
analysis. It can't be done so; art must have a life of its own."

"Yes," I said, "I think you are right. Herries is ascetic and
eremitical--a beautiful thing in many ways; but there is no transmission
of life in such art; it is a sterile thing after all, a seedless
flower."

"Let us express the vulgar hope," said Musgrave, "that he may fall in
love; that will bring him to his moorings! And now," he added, "we will
go to the music-room and I will see if I cannot tempt the shy bird from
his roost." And so we did--Musgrave is an excellent musician. We flung
the windows open; he embarked upon a great Bach "Toccata"; and before
many bars were over, our idealist crept softly into the room, with an
air of apologetic forgiveness.

XIV. A MIDSUMMER DAY'S DREAM

I suppose that every one knows by experience how certain days in one's
life have a power of standing out in the memory, even in a tract of
pleasant days, all lit by a particular brightness of joy. One does not
always know at the time that the day is going to be so crowned; but the
weeks pass on, and the one little space of sunlight, between dawn and
eve, has orbed itself

"into the perfect star
We saw not, when we moved therein."

The thing that in my own case most tends to produce this "grace
of congruity," as the schoolmen say, is the presence of the right
companion, and it is no less important that he should be in the right
mood. Sometimes the right companion is tiresome when he should be
gracious, or boisterous when he should be quiet; but when he is in the
right moo