Discobolus, the St. George of Donatello. If it had pleased these
people to wish to study, there was no lack of brains to do it with;
but imagine "what a deal of scorn" would "look beautiful" upon the
Venus of Milo's face if it were suggested to her that she should
learn to read. Which, think you, knows most, the Theseus, or any
modern professor taken at random? True, the advancement of learning
must have had a great share in the advancement of beauty, inasmuch as
beauty is but knowledge perfected and incarnate--but with the
pioneers it is sic vos non vobis; the grace is not for them, but for
those who come after. Science is like offences. It must needs come,
but woe unto that man through whom it comes; for there cannot be much
beauty where there is consciousness of knowledge, and while knowledge
is still new it must in the nature of things involve much
consciousness.

It is not knowledge, then, that is incompatible with beauty; there
cannot be too much knowledge, but it must have passed through many
people who it is to be feared must be more or less disagreeable,
before beauty or grace will have anything to say to it; it must be so
incarnate in a man's whole being that he shall not be aware of it, or
it will fit him constrainedly as one under the law, and not as one
under grace.

And grace is best, for where grace is, love is not distant. Grace!
the old Pagan ideal whose charm even unlovely Paul could not
understand, but, as the legend tells us, his soul fainted within him,
his heart misgave him, and, standing alone on the seashore at dusk,
he "troubled deaf heaven with his bootless cries," his thin voice
pleading for grace after the flesh.