traverse, but which is spanned by the luminous
wings of love.

And of such love I think that the abiding presence in our houses of noble
imaginative work would be the surest seed and preparation. I do not mean
merely as regards that direct literary expression of art by which, from
the little red-and-black cruse of oil or wine, a Greek boy could learn of
the lionlike splendour of Achilles, of the strength of Hector and the
beauty of Paris and the wonder of Helen, long before he stood and
listened in crowded market-place or in theatre of marble; or by which an
Italian child of the fifteenth century could know of the chastity of
Lucrece and the death of Camilla from carven doorway and from painted
chest. For the good we get from art is not what we learn from it; it is
what we become through it. Its real influence will be in giving the mind
that enthusiasm which is the secret of Hellenism, accustoming it to
demand from art all that art can do in rearranging the facts of common
life for us--whether it be by giving the most spiritual interpretation of
one's own moments of highest passion or the most sensuous expression of
those thoughts that are the farthest removed from sense; in accustoming
it to love the things of the imagination for their own sake, and to
desire beauty and grace in all things. For he who does not love art in
all things does not love it at all, and he who does not need art in all
things does not need it at all.

I will not dwell here on what I am sure has delighted you all in our
great Gothic cathedrals. I mean how the artist of that time,
handicraftsman himself in stone or glass, found the best motives for his
art, always ready for his hand and always beautiful, in the daily work of
the artificers he saw around him--as in those lovely windows of
Chartres--where the dyer dips in the vat and the potter sits at the
wheel, and the weaver stands at the loom: real manufacturers these,
workers with the hand, and entirely delightful to look at, not like the
smug and vapid shopman of our time, who knows nothing of the web or vase
he sells, except that he is charging you double its value and thinking
you a fool for buying it. Nor can I but just note, in passing, the
immense influence the decorative work of Greece and Italy had on its
artists, the one teaching the sculptor that restraining influence of
design which is the glory of the Parthenon, the other keeping painting
always true to its primary, pictoria