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No one will say that we ought all to become wonderful aesthetes like the Greek sculptors, or as sensitive as the saints; but if we admit that it is a barbarous thing to pass by the beauties of art without perceiving them; that it is the mark of defective civilization to confound horrible coarseness and monstrosity with ideal beauty, to be unable to distinguish the strident noise of the tram-car wheels, or the deafening crash of ill-tuned instruments from the harmonies of Bellini or Wagner; that each of us would blush for such insensibility, and would conceal it how is it we do not perceive that such obtuseness is habitual to us in moral matters?
It was the whole familiar picture of him now triumphantly painted in the harmonies of life, masterfully toned to subdue its discords that drove her back into herself.
"Oh, yes, it will come," she answered gently. "I think that after our long days of darkness there is sunshine for us somewhere by and by." And then the music began, and as the two listened to the mighty harmonies, their hands met and clasped each other under cover of the book which Lettice held, and their hearts seemed to beat in unison as the joyous choral music pealed out across the hall
It is diaphanous in texture, elaborately cut and trimmed with delicate laces and embroideries, and the rose of the under-robe, the snowy white of the muslin, the silver ornaments and the pale blonde hair of the wearer make the lightest and daintiest of harmonies accentuated by the black of the lacquer cabinet with its brilliant polychromatic insets.
As the artist interprets life, disclosing its depths and harmonies, so the appreciative critic in his turn interprets art, reconstituting the beauty of it in his own terms. Through his interpretation, the layman is enabled to enter more fully into the true spirit of the work and to share its beauty in his own experience.
But it was all higgledy-piggledy: his mind was a Babel, an old Jew's curiosity shop in which there were piled up in the one room rare treasures, precious stuffs, scrap-iron, and rags. He could not distinguish their values: everything amused him. There were thrilling chords, colors which rang like bells, harmonies which buzzed like bees, melodies smiling like lovers' lips.
The foundation of his professional power and public influence was this great personal achievement, this attuning of his own soul to noblest harmonies.
A tone that did not belong to any harmony would not be a dissonance, but a discord, a tone without meaning musically. Dissonances, like other contrasts, enrich the melody by establishing rival harmonies; discords destroy melodies. Just as the drama has little significance without conflict, so melodies are uninteresting without dissonances.
Commentaries were anciently written upon the Scriptures; harmonies formed out of them; different copies carefully collated; and versions made of them into different languages. No greater proof can be given of the esteem in which these books were holden by the ancient Christians, or of the sense then entertained of their value and importance, than the industry bestowed upon them.
Under the cloudless sky, in your boat in the midst of the great expanse of water, with only the sound of the oars in your ears, only the vague outline of the hills on the horizon before you; you admire the glittering snows of the French Maurienne; you pass, now by masses of granite clad in the velvet of green turf or in low-growing shrubs, now by pleasant sloping meadows; there is always a wilderness on the one hand and fertile lands on the other, and both harmonies and dissonances compose a scene for you where everything is at once small and vast, and you feel yourself to be a poor onlooker at a great banquet.
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