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Essays Æsthetical

by

George H. Calvert

1875

Contents

ESSAYS ÆSTHETICAL.

I.

The Beautiful.

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The Beautiful is one of the immortal themes. It cannot die; itgrows not old. On the same day with the sun was beauty born, andits life runs parallel with the path of that great beautifier. As asubject for exposition, it is at once easy and difficult: easy,from the affluence of its resources; difficult, from the exactionswhich its own spirit makes in the use of them.

Beauty—what is it? To answer this question were to solvemore than one problem. Shall we attempt what has been so oftenattempted and never fully achieved? Such attempts are profitable.What though we reach not the very heart of the mystery, we may getnear enough to hearken to the throb of its power, and our mindswill be nerved by the approximation.

To him who has the gift to feel its presence, nature teems withbeauty. Whithersoever the senses reach, whenever emotion kindles,wherever the mind seeks food for its finer appetites, there isbeauty. It expects us at the dawn; it is about us, “an hourlyneighbor,” through the day; at night it looks down on us fromstar-peopled immensities. Glittering on green lawns, glowing insunsets, flashing through storm-clouds, gilding our wakeful hours,irradiating sleep, it is ever around, within us, eager to sweetenour labors, to purify our thoughts. Nature is a vast treasure-houseof beauty, whereof the key is in the human heart.

But many are the hearts that have never opened far enough todisclose the precious key enfolded in their depths. Whole peoplesare at this moment ignorant that they live amid such wealth. Aswith them now, so in the remote primitive times of our own race,before history was, nature was almost speechless to man. The earthwas a waste, or but a wide hunting ground or pasturage; and humanlife a round of petty animal circles, scarcely sweeping beyond thefield of the senses; until there gradually grew up the big-eyedGreek and the deep-souled Hebrew. Then, through creativethought,—that is, thought quickened and exalted by an inwardthirst for the beautiful,—one little corner of Europe becameradiant, and the valley of Tempe and the wooded glens of Parnassusshone for the first time on the vision of men; for theireyes—opened from long sleep by inward stirring—werebecome as mirrors, and gave back the light of nature:

And man, heated by the throbs of his swelling heart, made godsafter his own image,—forms of such life and power and harmonythat the fragments of them, spared by time, are still guarded asfaultless models of manhood. And the vales and groves and streamswere peopled with beauteous shapes. And the high places were