38 love's meinie. 



LECTUEE 11. 



THE SWALLOW. 



41. We are to-day to take note of the form of a crea- 

 ture which gives us a singular example of the unity of 

 what artists call beauty, with the fineness of mechanical 

 structurCj often mistalvcn for it. You cannot but have 

 noticed how little, during the years of my past professor- 

 ship, I have introduced any questions as to the nature of 

 beauty. I avoided them, partly because they are treated 

 of at length in my books ; and partly because they are, 

 in the last degree, unpractical. We are born to like or 

 dislike certain aspects of things ; nor could I, by any 

 arguments, alter the defined tastes which you received at 

 your birth, and which the surrounding circumstances of 

 life have enforced, without any possibility of your volun- 

 tary resistance to them. And the result of those sur- 

 rounding circumstances, to-day, Is that most English 

 youths would have more pleasure in looking at a loco- 

 motive than at a swallow; and that many English phi- 

 losoj^hers would suppose the pleasure so received to be 

 tlirough a new sense of beauty. But the meaning of the 

 word " beauty " in the fine arts, and in classical literature, 

 is properly restricted to those very qualities in which 



