The Snowdrop
as rapidly and with as little effort as possible, for some of the most delightful sensuous impressions are very transient, and remain but for an instant in their full intensity. Look, for example, at a bright scarlet Ranunculus in the sunlight. You see the scarlet for a second, and then it changes into brown. You must turn your eyes away before you can renew the impression. And what is true of colour-beauty is to some extent true also of every other kind. This does not at all interfere with the fact that the longer we look the more we shall discover, and that some of the deepest impressions come latest. I only mean that no impression can last unimpaired. Every moment we may be gaining something fresh, but we are also losing hold of something which we had the moment before. There is a good illustration of this in the difference between childhood and maturity. The man in most respects may see deeper than the child, but he has lost the freshness and vividness of childhood's first perceptions. The eye then needs to get at beauty rapidly, and also needs something to assist it in holding the main bearings in view as it passes from part to part, or in recovering them when it has lost them.
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