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BEFORE BEAUTY 
I 
| ean genius is manliness, and before beauty 
is power. The Russian novelist and poet, Tur- 
genieff, scattered all through whose works you will 
find unmistakable traits of greatness, makes one of 
his characters say, speaking of beauty, “The old 
masters, — they never hunted after it; it comes of 
itself into their compositions, God knows whence, 
from heaven or elsewhere. The whole world be- 
longed to them, but we are unable to clasp its broad 
spaces; our arms are too short.” 
From the same depth of insight come these lines 
from “‘ Leaves of Grass,” apropos of true poems: — 
“They do not seek beauty — they are sought; 
Forever touching them, or close upon them, follows beauty, 
longing, fain, love-sick.’’ 
The Roman was perhaps the first to separate 
beauty from use, and pursue it as ornament merely. 
He built his grand edifice, — its piers, its vaults, its 
walls of brick and concrete,—and then gave it a 
marble envelope copied from the Greek architecture. 
The latter could be stripped away, as in many cases 
it was by the hand of time, and leave the essentials 
