every other. It is well that we should try to
enlarge those possibilities; and we must never make up our mind that a
picture, statue, piece of music or poetry, says little to us until we
have listened to its say. But although we strive to make new friends,
let us waste no further time on such persons as we have vainly tried to
make friends of; and let each of us, in heaven's name, cherish to the
utmost his natural affinities. There are persons to whom, for instance,
Botticelli can never be what he truly is to some of their neighbours:
the very quality which gives such marvellous poignancy of pleasure to
certain temperaments causing almost discomfort to others; and similarly
about many other artists, representing very special conditions of being,
and appealing to special conditions in consequence. High Alpine air,
sea-water, Roman melting westerly winds, so vitalising, so soothing to
some folk, are mere worry, or fever, or lassitude to others, without its
being correct to say that one set of persons is healthy and the other
morbid: each being, in truth, healthy or morbid just in proportion as it
realises its necessities of existence, fitting equally into the universe
providing it be fitted each into the proper piece thereof.

On the other hand (and this, rather than _filiations of schools_ and
_influences_ of artistic _milieus_, it were well we should know), it
becomes daily more empirically certain, and will some day doubtless
become scientifically obvious, that there are works of art which
awaken such emotion that they can be delectable only to creatures with
instincts out of gear and perception upside down; while there are others,
infinitely more plentiful, which, in greater or lesser degree, must
delight all persons who are sane, as all such are delighted by fine
weather, normal exercise, and kindly sympathy; and, _vice versa_, that
as these wholesome works of art merely bore or actually distress the
poor morbid exceptions, so the unwholesome ones sicken or harrow the
sound generality; the world of art, moreover, like every other world,
being best employed in keeping alive its sound, not its unsound,
clients.

Such works of art, such artists of widest wholesome appealingness, there
are in all periods of artistic development; more in certain fortunate
moments, say the Periklean age and the early sixteenth century, than
in others; and most perhaps in certain specially favoured regions--in
Attica during Antiquity, and