rhyme-balanced epigram, a gracious antithesis, taking an intellectual
place--_Felice chi vi mira_--or the art-critic's phrase--_piuttosto
bruttini_--of easy, companionable, and equal contempt.

As for French, if it had no other sacred words--and it has many--who
would not treasure the language that has given us--no, not that has given
us, but that has kept for its own--_ensoleille_? Nowhere else is the sun
served with such a word. It is not to be said or written without a
convincing sense of sunshine, and from the very word come light and
radiation. The unaccustomed north could not have made it, nor the
accustomed south, but only a nation part-north and part-south; therefore
neither England nor Italy can rival it. But there needed also the senses
of the French--those senses of which they say far too much in every
second-class book of their enormous, their general second-class, but
which they have matched in their time with some inimitable words. Perhaps
that matching was done at the moment of the full literary consciousness
of the senses, somewhere about the famous 1830. For I do not think
_ensoleille_ to be a much older word--I make no assertion. Whatever its
origin, may it have no end! They cannot weary us with it; for it seems
as new as the sun, as remote as old Provence; village, hill-side,
vineyard, and chestnut wood shine in the splendour of the word, the air
is light, and white things passing blind the eyes--a woman's linen, white
cattle, shining on the way from shadow to shadow. A word of the sense of
sight, and a summer word, in short, compared with which the paraphrase is
but a picture. For _ensoleille_ I would claim the consent of all
readers--that they shall all acknowledge the spirit of that French. But
perhaps it is a mere personal preference that makes _le jour
s'annonce_ also sacred.

If the hymn, "Stabat Mater dolorosa," was written in Latin, this could be