Yet we are very grateful to those who can teach us to turn our eyes
to the charm which surrounds us, and a life which is lived without
such perception is apt to be a rough and hurrying thing, even
though it may also be both high and austere. Like most of life, the
true success lies in not choosing one force and neglecting another,
but in an expectant kind of compromise. The great affairs and facts
of life flash upon us, whether we will or no; and even the man
whose mind is bent upon the greatest hopes and aims may find
strength and consolation in the lesser and simpler delights. Mighty
spirits like, let us say, Carlyle and Ruskin, were not hampered or
distracted from their further quest by the microscopic eye, the
infinite zest for detail, which characterised both. No one ever
spoke so finely as Carlyle of the salient features of moorland and
hill, and the silence so deep that it was possible to hear the far-
off sheep cropping the grass; no one ever noted so instantaneously
the vivid gesture or the picturesque turn of speech, or dwelt more
intently upon the pathetic sculpture of experience seen in the old
humble workaday faces of country-folk. No one ever delighted more
ecstatically than Ruskin in the colour of the amber cataract, with
its soft, translucent rims, its flying spray, or in the dim
splendours of some half-faded fresco, or in the intricate facade of
the crumbling, crag-like church front.
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