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At its highest degree of ennobling, music ought to become a form, and act on us with the calm power of an antique statue; in its most elevated perfection, the plastic art ought to become music and move us by the immediate action exercised on the mind by the senses; in its most complete development, poetry ought both to stir us powerfully like music and like plastic art to surround us with a peaceful light.
They were the cavaliers in chivalry and daring, and despised, as their descendants despised, the Roundheads and their descendants, with their cold, dissembling natures, hypocritical in religion as faithless in friendship, without one generous emotion or ennobling sentiment.
He resolved, that the mother might trust to the discretion of a man of his age; and he went down to Nesta, grave with the weight his count of years should give him. Seeing her, the light of what he now knew of her was an ennobling equal to celestial. For this fair girl was one of the active souls of the world his dream to discover in woman's form.
He never fully realised what a treasury they supply of motives to Christian conduct, and of material for sublime and ennobling thought; above all, that religion never has a missionary and converting power when they are not prominently brought forward.
Was it not utterly alien to the spirit of Christ thus to seclude oneself in light and warmth, among sweet strains of music and holy pictures? I do not doubt that these delights have a certain ennobling effect upon the spirit; but are they a medicine for the sorrows of the world? are they not rather the anodyne for sensitive spirits fond of tranquil ease?
But there is something meretricious and cheap in the use of material and subjects that lie warm against the very secret heart of nature. The mystery of love and the sanctity of death are to be used by writers and artists only in their ennobling aspect of results.
Master Anerley, once and forever, knew that his daughter was gone from him. That a stronger love than one generation can have for the one before it pure and devoted and ennobling as that love is now had arisen, and would force its way. He did not think it out like that, for his mind was not strictly analytic however his ideas were to that effect, which is all that need be said about them.
The girl who does not care to embrace opportunity is no better than a child 'Fanciulla tanto sciocca, quanto bella, as Dafne says. So, again, there is nothing ennobling in the devotion of the hero, nothing elevating in his fidelity.
Yet whilst wealth enervates men; and women live, as it were, by their personal charms, how, can we expect them to discharge those ennobling duties which equally require exertion and self-denial.
It cannot be denied that art, when in harmony with the exalted ideals of beauty and grace, which it seeks to perpetuate on canvas or in marble, does much to improve the taste, to promote refinement and aesthetic culture. And when art is pursued with a lofty end, seeking, like virtue, its own reward, there is much that is ennobling in it.
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