VANITY FAIR

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 110, 12 May 1931, Page 2

VANITY FAIR

SEEING BEAUTY Lei us then never attempt to limit beauty to definite artistic lines; that is the mistake of the superstitious formalist ip/io limits divine influences to certain sanctuaries and fixed ceremonials. The use of the sanctuary and the ceremonial is only to concentrale at one fiery point the wide current of impulsive ardour. The true lovci of beauty will await it everywhere, will see it in the town, with its rising roofs and its bleached and blackened steeples, in the seaport with its quaint crowded shipping, in the clustered hamlet with its orchard-closes and high-roofed barns, in the remote country with its wide fields and its converging lines, m the beating of the sea on shingle-bank and promontory; and then if he sees it there, he will see it concentrated and emphasized in pictures of these things, die beauty of which lies so often in the sense of the loving apprehension of the mystery of lights and hues; and then he Will trace the same subtle spirit in the orms and gestures and expressions of those among whom he lives, and will go deeper yet and trace the same spirit in conduct and behaviour, in the free and gellant handling of life, in the suppression of mean personal desires, in doing dull and disagreeable things with a fine end in view, in the noble affection of the simplest people; until he becomes aware that it is a quality which runs through everything he sees or hears or feels. —Arthur Christopher Benson in “Joyous Gard.”