that the
simplest and most elementary form of beauty which appeals to every one,
the beauty of human beings, has its root originally only in desire; but
I cannot follow that, because that would only account for one's
admiring a certain kind of fresh and youthful beauty, and in admiring
human beauty less and less as it declines from that. But this is not
the case at all; because there is a beauty of age which is often, in
its way, a more impressive and noble thing than the beauty of youth.
And there is, too, the beauty of expression, a far more subtle and
moving thing than mere beauty of feature: we must have often seen, for
instance, a face which by all the canons of beauty might be pronounced
admirable, yet the effect of which is wholly unattractive; while, on
the other hand, we have known faces that, from some ruggedness or want
of proportion, seemed at first sight even repellent, which have yet
come to hold for one an extraordinary quality of attractiveness, from
the beauty of the soul being somehow revealed in them, and are yet as
remote from any sense of desire as the beauty of a tree or a crag.

And then, again, in dealing with the beauty of nature, I have heard
philosophers say that the appeal which it makes is traceable to a sense
of prosperity or well-being; and that the love of landscape has grown
up out of the sense of satisfaction with which our primaeval ancestors
saw a forest full of useful timber and crowded with edible game. But
that again is entirely contradicted by my experience.

I went to-day on a vague walk in the country, taking attractive by-ways
and field-paths, and came in the course of the afternoon to a lonely
village among wide pastures which I had never visited before. The
bell-like sound of smitten metal, ringing cheerfully from a smithy,
outlined against the roar of a blown fire, seemed to set my mind in
tune. I turned into the tiny street. The village lies on no high-road;
it is remote and difficult of access, but at one time it enjoyed a
period of prosperity because of a reputation for dairy produce; and
there were half-a-dozen big farm-houses on the street, of different
dates, which testified to this. There was an old timbered Grange,
deserted, falling into ruin. There was a house with charming high brick
gables at either end, with little battlemented crow-steps, and with
graceful chimney-stacks at the top. There was another solid Georgian
house, with thick white casements and moss-gr