Pagina 841 van 1391

Then beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend

on simplicity,-I mean the true simplicity of a rightly and nobly

ordered mind and character, not that other simplicity which is

only an euphemism for folly?

Very true, he replied.

And if our youth are to do their work in life, must they not make

these graces and harmonies their perpetual aim?

They must.

And surely the art of the painter and every other creative and

constructive art are full of them,-weaving, embroidery,

architecture, and every kind of manufacture; also nature, animal

and vegetable,-in all of them there is grace or the absence of

grace. And ugliness and discord and inharmonious motion are

nearly allied to ill words and ill nature, as grace and harmony

are the twin sisters of goodness and virtue and bear their

likeness.

That is quite true, he said.