does not allow such nice
and stable discriminations as does the ear. The art of combining
dishes and wines, although one which everybody practises with
more or less skill and attention, deals with a material far too
unrepresentable to be called beautiful. The art remains in the
sphere of the pleasant, and is consequently regarded as servile,
rather than fine.

Artists in life, if that expression may be used for those who have
beautified social and domestic existence, have appealed
continually to these lower senses. A fragrant garden, and savoury
meats, incense, and perfumes, soft stuffs, and delicious colours,
form our ideal of oriental luxuries, an ideal which appeals too
much to human nature ever to lose its charm. Yet our northern
poets have seldom attempted to arouse these images in their
sensuous intensity, without relieving them by some imaginative
touch. In Keats, for example, we find the following lines: --

And still she slept in azure-lidded sleep,
In blanched linen, smooth and lavendered,
While he from forth the closet brought a heap
Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd,
With jellies soother than the creamy curd,
And lucent syrops tinct with cinnamon;
Manna and dates in argosy transferred
From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one
From silken Samarcand to cedared Lebanon.

Even the most sensuous of English poets, in whom the love of
beauty is supreme, cannot keep long to the primal elements of
beauty; the higher flight is inevitable for him. And how much does
not the appeal to things in argosy transferred from Fez, reinforced
with the reference to Samarcand and especially to the authorized
beauties of the cedars of Lebanon, which even the Puritan may
sing without a blush, add to our wavering satisfaction and
reconcile our conscience to this unchristian indulgence of sense!

But the time may be near when such scruples will be less common,
and our poetry, with our other arts, will dwell nearer to the
fountain-head of all inspiration. For if nothing not once in sense is
to be found in the intellect, much less is such a thing to be found in
the imagination. If the cedars of Lebanon did not spread a grateful
shade, or the winds rustle through the maze of their branches, if
Lebanon had never been beautiful to sense, it would not now be a
fit or poetic subject of allusion. And the word "Fez" would be
without imaginative value if no traveller had ever felt t