LECTURE II.* 



THE SWALLOW. 



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

 of a creature which gives us a singular 

 example of the unity of what artists call 

 beauty, with the fineness of mechanical 

 structure, often mistaken for it. You cannot 

 but have noticed how little, during the years 

 of my past professorship, 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 voluntary resistance to them. And the 

 * Delivered at Oxford, May 2nd, 1873. 



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