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The girl shook her head until the blue ribbons on her straw hat fluttered in the wind, and blushed until her soft eyes were like forget-me-nots set in rose leaves. She possessed a serene, luminous beauty, which became intensified beneath the gaze of the beholder.
The splendor of the passage, however, will inevitably dazzle the feeling reader, till it produce the common effect of excessive brightness, that of somewhat blinding the beholder." While we were thus pleasantly engaged, the servant announced Mrs. Fentham; and a fashionable looking woman, about the middle of life, rather youthfully dressed, and not far from handsome, made her appearance.
Studied singly or as parts of the entire composition, they were exquisite as works of art, charming the attention of the beholder with a bewildering fascination. The floor was one vast mosaic of superbly colored tiles. The heavy mahogany tables and sideboards were glittering with their costly equipments of shining silver, sparkling cut glass, and rare, translucent china.
Then its high, narrow windows, and the low, square towers, pierced with loopholes, give to it that air of the fortress which immediately impresses the beholder. Without doubt it was built like so many other churches of the same stormy and uncertain period, to be used as a place of refuge in case of danger.
The beholder assists at the climax of a great crisis, unfolded to him in the impartial spirit of true art, quite without partisanship, and though manifestly stimulated by sympathy with the nobler cause, even more acutely conscious of the grandeur of the struggle and the distinction of those on all sides engaged in it, and acquiring from these a kind of elation, of exaltation such as the Frenchman experiences only when he may give expression to his artistic and his patriotic instincts at the same moment.
Even now, his face was swollen, and he made a determined effort to show the court the particular tooth which had made him an unwilling beholder of the tragedy. Overcome by exhaustion, he had fallen asleep after a time, and he was awakened by the sounds of a quarrel. On opening his eyes, he saw two Americans, one of whom was Senor Cortlandt, and the other Kirk Anthony.
But the longer you examined him, the more his features seemed to breathe vitality and spirit, and the firmer grew the conviction that this was an exceptional being a rare and strange phenomenon. Once accustomed to his apparent pale and sickly homeliness, the beholder soon saw it transformed into a fascinating beauty such as we admire on the antique Roman cameos and old imperial coins.
The work was done when the whole church was restored about half a century ago, and has not the claim of medieval whim upon the fancy. Not so much pleasure as he might wish mingles with the marvel of the beholder, who carries a crick in the neck away from the sight, and yet once, but not more, in a way, it is worth while to have had the sight.
Last, the beauty of the painting, because created in the beholder through a fixed and permaneat mechanism constructed by the artist, is communicable and abiding, whereas the immediate beauty of nature is incommunicable and transient.
The tendency toward the latter ended some time ago, and in our time Beauvais makes mainly those exquisite coverings for seats and screens that give the beholder a thrill of artistic joy and a determination to possess something similar.
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