The Open Air 



that live and move, but do not fit. Ponderously 

 gawky, he steps as if the world was his, like a 

 " motley " crowned in sport. He is good eating, but 

 he is not beautiful. After the eye has been accus- 

 tomed to him for some time after you have fed him 

 every day and come to take an interest in him 

 after you have seen a hundred turkey-cocks, then 

 he may become passable, or, if you have the fancier's 

 taste, exquisite. Education is requisite first; you 

 do not fall in love at first sight. The same applies 

 to fancy-pigeons, and indeed many pet animals, as 

 pugs, which come in time to be animated with a soul 

 in some people's eyes. Compare a pug with a grey- 

 hound straining at the leash. Instantly he is slipped 

 he is gone as a wave let loose. His flexible back 

 bends and undulates, arches and unarches, rises and 

 falls as a wave rises and rolls on. His pliant ribs 

 open; his whole frame "gives " and stretches, and 

 closing again in a curve, springs forward. Movement 

 is as easy to him as to the wave, which melting, is re- 

 moulded, and sways onward. The curve of the grey- 

 hound is not only the line of beauty, but a line which 

 suggests motion; and it is the idea of motion, I think, 

 which so strongly appeals to the mind. 



We are often scornfully treated as a nation by 

 people who write about art, because they say we 

 have no taste; we cannot make art jugs for the 

 mantelpiece, crockery for the bracket, screens for the 

 fire; we cannot even decorate the wall of a room 

 as it should be done. If these are the standards by 

 which a sense of art is to be tried, their scorn is to a 

 certain degree just. But suppose we try another 

 standard. Let us put aside the altogether false 

 opinion that art consists alone in something actually 

 made, or painted, or decorated, in carvings, colour- 



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