The Clergyman's Wife and Other Sketches/The Love of the Beautiful
THE LOVE OF THE BEAUTIFUL.
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he love of the beautiful is of celestial origin. It is the holy offspring of an affection for the good and true. The myriad phases of earthly beauty that spring up in life's humblest pathways, are visible symbols of the infinite, ineffable beauty of diviner spheres. How affluent is the exuberant earth in revelations of loveliness! They burst into life beneath our feet, in
they beat the air with iris-tinted pinions above our heads, stretch out enchanting vistas before our eyes, dance on the crest of the impetuous waterfall, slumber upon the bosom of the tranquil stream, gaze at their own images in the mirror of the glassy lake, look down from the effulgent stars, unfurl their orient-hued banners at the waving of Aurora's hand, shoot their meteoric lights before wondering eyes, arch the prismatic bow in the blue canopy above, start into life whenever Nature lifts her sceptre, an undisputed sovereign; sparkle in every quivering dew-drop, pulsate through the great artery of all creation. And day and night, these glorious witnesses of Beauty's all-pervading existence are chanting in chorus, "Love the beautiful, for those immortal fountains, whence all purity descends, are beauty's well-spring!" And the poet lifts his voice to echo the universal hymn, and sings,
But the world is not embellished by Beauty which prodigal Nature alone unfolds; her handmaiden Art develops the beautiful with emulating skill, and when she weds a pure creation to a noble use, her brow is radiant with Nature's borrowed crown! The vivid reflex of the painter's genius mirrored upon our walls; the triumph of the sculptor's chisel reared in our homes, are not mere tasteful, profitless luxuries. There is a soul-refining power in their familiar contemplation; they quicken those higher sensibilities which time is making a constant effort to deaden; they find avenues to the dormant heart hitherto undiscovered; they lift the daily thoughts out of the monotonous round of petty solicitudes, out of the mire of commonplace cares which so quickly destroy the freshness of the spirit; they fill the mind, through the eye, with elevating images, with visions of serener realms, until the clamor and tumult of this world sound afar off. Thus inspired, Art shares Nature's glory when she achieves the beautiful, and lays the offering upon a Heaven-dedicated altar.
There is a class of beings who seem especially gifted with beautifying eyes,
"With prompt embrace all beauty to enfold."
They have an unconscious power of idealizing whatever they look upon in nature, in art, in humanity. They deck the granite hardness of reality with the tender and clinging ivy of sentiment, and cover the sharp angles of bare facts with the velvety mosses of imagination. With them there is ever an under-current of poetry flowing beneath life's turgid stream of tritest prose. They are the world's true poets, though perchance, they cannot lay claim to the smallest foothold of territory in Parnasus, and have never been impelled by the stirring of the "divine afflatus," to pen an inspiration. They are they true artists, though they paint no pictures, for they have the artist-instinct throbbing within, and a living panorama of graceful forms, symmetrical outlines, and glorious scenes is ever passing in long procession before their mental vision. Better still, they are constantly moved by an irresistible impulse to make Beauty and Use clasp hands. As Linnæus constructed a dial out of flowers, and, by the expanding and closing of delicate blossoms, told the time of day as accurately as if it had been chronicled by the intricate machinery of a watch, so the passing hours of those who inherit this beautifying temperament are marked by the blooming and folding of life's choicest flowers.
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