where one can stand, though only for a brief moment, apart from the
division and terror of the world and the choice of the world too?

This is that CONSOLATION DES ARTS which is the key-note of
Gautier's poetry, the secret of modern life foreshadowed - as
indeed what in our century is not? - by Goethe. You remember what
he said to the German people: 'Only have the courage,' he said,
'to give yourselves up to your impressions, allow yourselves to be
delighted, moved, elevated, nay instructed, inspired for something
great.' The courage to give yourselves up to your impressions:
yes, that is the secret of the artistic life - for while art has
been defined as an escape from the tyranny of the senses, it is an
escape rather from the tyranny of the soul. But only to those who
worship her above all things does she ever reveal her true
treasure: else will she be as powerless to aid you as the
mutilated Venus of the Louvre was before the romantic but sceptical
nature of Heine.

And indeed I think it would be impossible to overrate the gain that
might follow if we had about us only what gave pleasure to the
maker of it and gives pleasure to its user, that being the simplest
of all rules about decoration. One thing, at least, I think it
would do for us: there is no surer test of a great country than
how near it stands to its own poets; but between the singers of our
day and the workers to whom they would sing there seems to be an
ever-widening and dividing chasm, a chasm which slander and mockery
cannot 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