The Project Gutenberg EBook of Laurus Nobilis, by Vernon Lee

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Title: Laurus Nobilis
Chapters on Art and Life

Author: Vernon Lee

Release Date: January 31, 2009 [EBook #27939]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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LAURUS NOBILIS

BY

VERNON LEE

CONTENTS

The Use of Beauty
"Nisi Citharam"
Higher Harmonies
Beauty and Sanity
The Art and the Country
Art and Usefulness
Wasteful Pleasures

LAURUS NOBILIS.

CHAPTERS ON ART AND LIFE.

TO
ANGELICA RASPONI DALLE TESTE
FROM
HER GRATEFUL OLD FRIEND AND NEIGHBOUR
VERNON LEE.
1885-1908.

Die Realitaet der Dinge ist der Dinge Werk; der Schein der Dinge
ist der Menschen Werk; und ein Gemuet, das sich am Scheine weidet,
ergoetzt sich schon nicht mehr an dem, was es empfaengt, sondern an
dem, was es tut. SCHILLER, _Briefe ueber Aesthetik_.

LAURUS NOBILIS.

THE USE OF BEAUTY.

I.

One afternoon, in Rome, on the way back from the Aventine, the
road-mender climbed onto the tram as it trotted slowly along, and
fastened to its front, alongside of the place of the driver, a bough
of budding bay.

Might one not search long for a better symbol of what we may all do by
our life? Bleakness, wind, squalid streets, a car full of
heterogeneous people, some very dull, most very common; a laborious
jog-trot all the way. But to redeem it all with the pleasantness of
beauty and the charm of significance, this laurel branch.

II.

Our language does not possess any single word wherewith to sum up the
various categories of things (made by nature or made by man, intended
solely for the purpose of subserving by mere coincidence) which
minister to our organic and many-sided aesthetic instincts: the things
affecting us in that absolutely special, unmistakable, and hitherto
mysterious manner expressed in our finding them _beautiful_. It is of
the pa