nt in its
greater. And its chief ignobility is the love of marred, defiled,
disordered, dulled, and imperfect skies, the skies of cities.

Some will tell us that the unveiled light is too clear or sharp for art.
So much the worse for art; but even on that plea the limitations of art
are better respected by natural mist, cloudy gloom of natural rain,
natural twilight before night, or natural twilight--Corot's--before day,
than by the artificial dimness of our unlovely towns. Those, too, who
praise the "mystery" of smoke are praising rather a mystification than a
mystery; and must be unaware of the profounder mysteries of light. Light
is all mystery when you face the sun, and every particle of the
innumerable atmosphere carries its infinitesimal shadow.

Moreover, it is only in some parts of the world that we should ask for
even natural veils. In California we may, not because the light is too
luminous, but because it is not tender. Clear and not tender in
California, tender and not clear in England; light in Italy and in Greece
is both tender and clear.

When one complains of the ill-luck of modern utilities, the sympathetic
listener is apt to agree, but to agree wrongly by denouncing the electric
light as something modern to be deplored. But the electric light is the
one success of the last century. It is never out of harmony with natural
things--villages, ancient streets of cities, where it makes the most
beautiful of all street-lighting, swung from house to opposite house in
Genoa or Rome. With no shock, except a shock of pleasure, does the
judicious traveller, entering some small sub-alpine hamlet, find the
electric light, fairly, sparingly spaced, slung from tree to tree over
the little road, and note it again in the frugal wine-shop, and solitary
and clear over the church portal.

Yet, forsooth, if yielding to the suggestions of your restless hobby, you
denounce, in any company, the spoiling of your Italy, the hearer, calling
up a "mumping visnomy," thinks he echoes your complaint by his sigh, "Ah,
yes--the electric light; you meet it everywhere now; so modern, so
disenchanting." It is, on the contrary, enchanting. It is as natural as
lightning. By all means let all the waterfalls in all the Alps be
"harnessed," as the lamentation runs, if their servitude gives us
electric light. For thus the power of the waterfall kindles a lovely
lamp. All this to be done by the simple force of gravitation--the
p