Vanishing Roads and Other Essays

pions, and the idea of our falling in love with any other is too preposterous even for discussion. If our tastes happen to be for blondness, brunettes simply do not exist for us; and if we a

is not "obvious." On the contrary, it is of that rare and exquisite quality which only a few favoured ones can apprehend-like the beauty of a Whistler or a Corot, and we have been chosen to be its high-priest and evangelist. It is our secret, this beautiful face that we love, and we wonder how any

y which is beautiful in spite of the body rather than by means of it; a beauty defiantly clothed, so to say, in the dowdiest of fleshly garments-radiantly independent of such carnal condit

he surface, that the shape of a nose is no matter, and that a beautifully rounded chin or a fine throat has nothing to do with it-indeed, is rather in the way than ot

ly cherry-ripe. It is with faces much as it is with books. There is no way of attaining a vital catholic taste in literature so good as to begin by mastering some difficult beautiful classic, by devoting ourselves in the ardent receptive period of youth to one or two masterpieces which will serve as touchstones for us in all our subseque

ed during the period of our dedication. The subtler the type, the more caviare it is to the general, the more we learn from it. We become in a sense discoverers, original thinkers, of beauty, taking nothing on authority, but making trial and investigation always for our

all the precious elements in the act of combination. No wonder we should deem these faces the most beautiful of all, for through them we see, not beauty made flesh, but beauty while it is still spirit. In our eager fanaticism, indeed, we cannot conceive that there can be beauty in any other types as well. Yet, because we chance to have fallen under the spell of Botticelli, shall there be no mo

eaks. How should we understand a beauty that is vociferously gay, a beauty

ish love. Moralists have perhaps not realized how much continence is due to a narrowness of aesthetic taste. Obviously the man who sees beauty only in blue eyes is securer from temptation than the man who can see beauty in brown or green eyes

t to be. It is a part of that gradual abdication of the ego which comes of the slow realization that other people are quite as interesting as ourselves-in fact, a little more so,-and their tastes and ways of looking at things may be worth pondering, after all. But, O when we have arrived at this stage, what a bewildering world of seductive new impressions spreads for us its multitudinous snares! No longer mere individuals, we have not merely an individual's temptations

vague desire to make reparation to a slighted type, and partly from the experimental pleasure of loving a beauty the attraction of which it was once impossible for us to

w into yours? Hair black as Erebus, will you forgive these hands that once loved to bathe in a b

f the world, forgive me that once I gave to the littl

rchard of apple blossoms, forgive that once I loved the shadow women, the sad wreathing mists of b

t is hidden from us. The world has become a garden of beautiful faces. The flowers are different, but they are all beautiful. How is it possible for us, now that we know the charm of each one, to be indifferent to any, or to set the beau

ul, that is all. Nor is gold hair more beautiful than black any more, or black than gold. They are differen

it upon the bough; come softly like a timid fawn, or terrible as an army with banners; come silen

topheles in this: We must pay him for all this wisd

but evil before, we miss something from our delight in these faces. We can appreciate more beauty, but do we appreciate any quite as much as in those o

our