admiration of their gifts, for the art is so rare that we ought to
welcome it when we find it; and, like all arts, it depends to a
great extent for its sustenance on the avowed gratitude of those
who enjoy it. It is on these subtle half-toned glimpses of
personality and difference that most of our happy impressions of
life depend; and no one can afford wilfully to neglect sources of
innocent joy, or to lose opportunities of pleasure through a stupid
or brutal contempt for the slender resources out of which these
gentle effects are produced.






VI

BEAUTY





I was visited, as I sate in my room to-day, by one of those sudden
impressions of rare beauty that come and go like flashes, and which
leave one desiring a similar experience. The materials of the
impression were simple and familiar enough. My room looks out into
a little court; there is a plot of grass, and to the right of it an
old stone-built wall, close against which stands a row of aged
lime-trees. Straight opposite, at right angles to the wall, is the