THE SENSE OF BEAUTY.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), 22 February 1883, Page 4

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY.

Mr. Ruskin has told us that if the sense of beauty begins with pleasure at the sight of an object it docs not stop there, but includes joy in the love of the object, then a perception of kindness in a superior intelligence —finally thankfulness and reverence towards the intelligence. To borrow words of the lately departed Dr John Brown, '* All beauty of thought, pas._n, affection, form, sound, color, and touch, whatever stirs our mortal and immortal frame, not only conies from, but is centred in God, in His unspeakable perfections. This wo believe to be not only morally, but in its widest sense philosophically true, as the white light rays itself out into the prismatic colors, making our world what it is—as if all that we behold were the spectrum of the unseen Eternal." This, the moral theory of beauty, Mr Ruskin has unfolded throughout his works, and especially in 4 he second volume of his " Modern Painters" ; and he deserves our gratitude for the strong witness he has borne to the doctrine, that all sublimity and all beauty are an adumbration of the unseen character of the Eternal One. I am well aware that there are other theories of beauty than this, which measure it by quite other standards. There arc those that hold that beauty should be sought for its only sake, quite apart from any moral meaning it may be alleged to have. They proclaim loudly what is called the moral indifference of art, and that to try to connect it with moral ideas or spiritual reality is to narrow or sectarianise it. They deprecate entirely in their idea of beauty any transcendental reference, and say that it has certain occult qualities of its own, which may be known and appreciated only by a refined nature and a cultivated taste. Such persons, one soon perceives, mean primarily by beauty, sensuous beauty,, grace of form and outline, richness or delicacy of coloi\ Painting, as the highest of those arts which deal with sensuous beauty, they take especially under their wing, and not painting oidy, but all the arts which mfm'sfer to tlie adornment of oiit-sva-rd. life. But such a pursuit of beauty, genuino though it may be at first, because it has no root in the deeper, more universal side of human nature, swiftly degenerates into a mere fashion. What is dear, rare, or

antique, or out of the way, gets valued because it is so, not from any spiritual meaning or intrinsic worth it possesses. A surprise, a new sensation, comes to bo the one thing desired Hence comes affectation, and artificial, as opposed to natural and healthy sentiment. _amierism, moodiness, exclusiveness, the spirit of coterie, are tho accompaniments of this mental habit, which craves for beauty, divorced from truth of life, without any really human and ethical root.—The Contemporary Re-