4 THE BEAUTIES OF NATURE CHAP. 
we may all look at the same things, it does 
not at all follow that we should see them. 
It is good, as Keble says, “to have our 
thoughts lift up to that world where all is 
beautiful and glorious,’ —but it is well to 
realise also how much of this world is beauti- 
ful. It has, I know, been maintained, as for 
instance by Victor Hugo, that the general 
effect of beauty is to sadden. ‘Comme la 
vie de homme, méme la plus prospére, est 
toujours au fond plus triste que gaie, le ciel 
sombre nous est harmonieux. Le ciel écla- 
tant et joyeux nous est ironique. La Nature 
triste nous ressemble et nous console; la 
Nature rayonnante, magnifique, superbe . . . 
a quelque chose d’accablant.” * 
This seems to me, I confess, a morbid 
view. There are many no doubt on whom 
the effect of natural beauty is to intensify 
feeling, to deepen melancholy, as well as 
to raise the spirits. As Mrs. W. R. Greg 
in her memoir of her husband tells us: 
“His passionate love for nature, so amply 
fed by the beauty of the scenes around him, 
1 Choses Vues. 
