FIRST BLOOD AT SALMON-FISHING. 35 



" Yes : an appearance of fitness unstudied. Observe 

 a very young girl, how pretty the artless grace of all 

 her movements ! She becomes a ' young lady,' and 

 gains increased mind and beauty, but she cannot 

 retain the unconscious charm of early girlhood." 



" Pretty much the same with the great works of 

 art," I said; " these have cost years of thought and 

 labour, but their chief perfection is a look of single- 

 ness and simplicity : a Gothic cathedral or a Greek 

 statue have that grandly simple grace. Even the 

 complicated yet smooth-moving steam-engine looks as 

 if it were the cast of single thought ; how different 

 from the flagrant elaboration of a state carriage or a 

 Brighton terrace ! " 



" Or a Brighton belle compared with a quiet gentle- 

 woman," said Ward. 



The Major added, "Or Tennyson's ' Enoch Arden' 

 compared with the exquisite simplicity of *' Auld 

 Eobin Gray,' which tells a similar story, with ten 

 times the force and feeling, in a few verses." 



"Ho, ho! Major, another heresy. How shall I 

 own, when I get back to civilization, that I was on 

 friendly terms with a man who actually deprecated 

 college life and Tennyson's poems ? " 



" Say he was a little crazy. Yet in face of such a 



D 2 



