THE WEEK.

Otago Witness, Issue 3333, 30 January 1918, Page 49

THE WEEK.

Do you ever -wonder why it is that beautv is so beautiful? That sounds odd, perhaps, but I don't know how else to put it.. What I mean is, do you ever try to fathom just what it is that gives us the feeling of pleasure we get from seeing anything beautiful? It is such an elusive quality, beauty. Heat and cold, darkness and Mffkk, are definite qualities. We know -when a thing possesses one or the other, and we can understand their effect on us; but with beauty it is different. What may be beautiful to one person.may not be so to another; and also it is not

always easy to. explain why a certain sight should move as to a pleasure so intense that it is almost pain. It is much better not to try, and to simply accept things just as they- are and enjoy them ; but still I could not help being moved to some reflections of this kind just lately while spending a few days at one of the holiday resorts up our coast. Wo elimDed a hill one day, and when a good way up the steep road we turned back to look at what lay behind us. It was worth looking at. Below and beyond us were two beaches, divided by a little peninsula of yellow sandstone weathered into irregular and curious shapes. On tho north side of it a river runs out to sea, and beyond the river the further beach stretched round in a wonderful curve to a very characteristic headland of the same yellow sandstone, softened by grass and clumps of scrubby trees. The colour of the sea was magnificent—a deep, unfathomable green-blue,—and from where we stood the further beach looked as if it were a segment of a perfect circle, so sweeping and so rounded was the curve, and it was then I began to wonder just why that curve'was so "beautiful," and why it gave me such a feeling of delight to see it; but it was no good. I couldn't explain it, and I gave it up. It was there, and we could look at it, and that was enough. The only thing that was wanting, we came to the conclusion, was a picturesque ruin at the end of the little peninsula, such as there would have been if this had been one of the older European countries Unfortunately, so far as New Zealand L concerned, it is generally a case of

Where every prospect pleases Arid) only man is vile, for while Nature has been lavish in her gifts of beauty, the principal thing that man does is to dump down all over the landscape a collection of little square boxes with tin roofs that he calls houses. And they are not beautiful. So here is another mystery. Why are things ugly? These dwellings are simple in design. I am thinking particularly of these seaside "crib 3" or pottages—and there is a beauty in simplicity, yet you cannot by any means call them beautiful. The trouble is that we as a nation have not that instinct for proportion and "line" possessed by such people as the Japanese or the ancient Greeks. However, we may learn better things in time. At present we can take little credit to ourselves for the beauty to be found everywhere in New Zealand. It is Nature's work, not ours; and has she not done her work well? I, for one, am grateful to her, and especially for this spot upon the coast of which I have spoken. The sea seems to take on colours there that vou do not see anywhere else—at least, in such an everchanging variety. When the tide comes up and fills the flat river-mouth from shore to shore it is especially beautiful. There is always a little wind there in the mornings, so that the water is ruffled, and when the sun shines on it you would think you were looking at millions of dancing diamonds. The water in the river is a paler blue than that of the sea beyond the sandspit—pale blue and diver in the sunlight, and the deeper blue beyond, and the white sandhills tipped with brown grass, and. back of all, thei green of the circling hills, and, over all, the sky. Round on the near bend you get a change of scene. At one end are great grey basalt rocks with brown and yellow seaweed clinging to them, and floating to and fro with every movement of the blue-gi'een water. At the other, the little yellow peninsula, with a quaint fringe of trees on its highest ridge, runs out into the sea, some of its points weathered into curious slopes, like the two tall pillars called by one who loved the place "The Gates of 'the Dawn," because the mornin<r sunlight makes a path of light along the sea between them. I have seen it so, and have been glad that we can feel beauty, even though we may not understand it. ELIZABETH.