Or
take the strange shapes and colours of flowers, the snapdragon with
its blunt lips, the nasturtium with its round flat leaves and
flaming horns--they are endless in variety, but all expressing
something not only quite definite, but remotely inherited. Or take
houses--how perfectly simple and graceful an old homestead can be,
how frightfully pretentious and vulgar the speculative builder's
work often is, how full of beauty both of form and colour almost
all the houses in certain parts of the country are, as in the
Cotswolds, where the soft stone has tempted builders to try
experiments, and to touch up a plain front with a little delicate
and well-placed ornament. Or take the aspect of men, women, and
children; how attractive some cannot help being, whatever they do;
how helplessly unattractive and uninteresting others can be, and
yet how, even so, a fine and sweet nature can make beautiful the
plainest and ungainliest of faces. And then in a further region
still there are the thoughts and habits and prejudices of people,
all wholly distinct, some beautiful and desirable, and others
unpleasant and even intolerable.
I could multiply instances indefinitely; but my point is that art
in the largest sense is or can be concerned with observing and
comparing all these separate qualities, wherever they appear. Of
course every one's observation does not extend to everything. There
are some people who are wholly unobservant, let us say, of scenery
or houses, who are yet very shrewd judges of character.
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