their life in fairer colours; even the deaf
girl was clothed in poetry for Mikita, or he had never fallen. And so,
once again, even an Old Bailey melodrama, without some brightness of
poetry and lustre of existence, falls into the inconceivable and ranks
with fairy tales.

IV

In nobler books we are moved with something like the emotions of life;
and this emotion is very variously provoked. We are so moved when Levine
labours on the field, when Andre sinks beyond emotion, when Richard
Feverel and Lucy Desborough meet beside the river, when Antony, "not
cowardly, puts off his helmet," when Kent has infinite pity on the dying
Lear, when, in Dostoieffsky's "Despised and Rejected," the uncomplaining
hero drains his cup of suffering and virtue. These are notes that please
the great heart of man. Not only love, and the fields, and the bright
face of danger, but sacrifice and death and unmerited suffering humbly
supported, touch in us the vein of the poetic. We love to think of them,
we long to try them, we are humbly hopeful that we may prove heroes
also.

We have heard, perhaps, too much of lesser matters. Here is the door,
here is the open air.

_Itur in antiquam silvam._

FOOTNOTE:

[17] Wild cherries.

LATER ESSAYS

LATER ESSAYS

I

FONTAINEBLEAU

VILLAGE COMMUNITIES OF PAINTERS

I

The charm of Fontainebleau is a thing apart. It is a place that people
love even more than they admire. The vigorous forest air, the silence,
the majestic avenues of highway, the wilderness of tumbled boulders, the
great age and dignity of certain groves--these are but ingredients, they
are not the secret of the philtre. The place is sanative; the air, the
light, the perfumes, and the shapes of things concord in happy harmony.
The artist may be idle and not fear the "blues." He may dally with his
life. Mirth, lyric mirth, and a vivacious classical contentment are of
the very essence of the better kind of art; and these, in that most
smiling forest, he has the chance to learn or to remember. Even on the
plain of Biere, where the Angelus of Millet still tolls upon the ear of
fancy, a larger air, a higher heaven, something ancient and healthy in
the face of nature, purify the mind alike from dulness and hysteria.
There is no place where the young are more gladly conscious of their
youth, or the old better contented with their age.

The fact of its great and special beauty further recommends this cou