sympathize; and their artistic gifts are subordinated to a deeper
purpose, the desire of giving and serving. One with such a passion
in the heart is incapable of believing art to be the deepest thing
in the world; it is to such an one more like the lily which floats
upwards, to bloom on the surface of some dim pool, a thing
exquisitely fair and symbolical of mysteries; but all growing out
of the depths of life, and not a thing which is deeper and truer
than life.

It is useless to try to dive deeper than the secrets of personality
and temperament. One must merely be grateful for the beauty which
springs from them. We must reflect that the hard, vigorous,
hammered quality, which is characteristic of the best art, can only
be produced, in a mood of blind and unquestioning faith, by a
temperament which believes that such production is its highest end.
But one who stands a little apart from the artistic world, and yet
ardently loves it, can see that, beautiful as is the dream of the
artist, true and pure as his aspiration is, there is yet a deeper
mystery of life still, of which art is nothing but a symbol and an
evidence. Perhaps that very belief may of itself weaken a man's
possibilities in art. But, for myself, I know that I regard the
absorption in art as a terrible and strong temptation for one whose
chief pleasure lies in the delight of expression, and who seems, in
the zest of shaping a melodious sentence to express as perfectly
and lucidly as possible the shape of the thought within, to touch
the highest joy of which the spirit is capable. A thought, a scene
of beauty comes home with an irresistible sense of power and
meaning to the mind or eye; for God to have devised the pale liquid
green of the enamelled evening sky, to have set the dark forms of
trees against it, and to have hung a star in the thickening gloom--