150 BIRDS AND POETS 



of the structure nearly complete. Not so with the 

 G-reek: he did. not seek the heautiful; he was 

 beauty; his building had no ornament, it was all 

 structure; in its beauty was the flower of necessity, 

 the charm of inborn fitness and proportion. In 

 other words, " his art was structure refined into beau- 

 tiful forms, not beautiful forms superimposed upon 

 structure, " as with the Eoman. And it is in Greek 

 mythology, is it not, that Beauty is represented -as 

 riding upon the back of a lion? as she assuredly 

 always does in their poetry and art, — rides upon 

 power, or terror, or savage fate ; not only rides upon, 

 but is wedded and incorporated with; hence the 

 athletic desire and refreshment her coming imparts. 



This is the invariable order of nature. Beauty 

 without a rank material basis enfeebles. The world 

 is not thus made; man is not thus begotten and 

 nourished. 



It comes to me there is something implied or 

 understood when we look upon a beautiful object, 

 that has quite as much to do with the impression 

 made upon the mind as anything in the object itself; 

 perhaps more. There is somehow an immense and 

 undefined background of vast and unconscionable 

 energy, as of earthquakes, and ocean storms, and 

 cleft mountains, across which things of beauty play, 

 and to which they constantly defer; and when this 

 background is wanting, as it is in much current 

 poetry, beauty sickens and dies, or at most has only 

 a feeble existence. 



Nature does nothing merely for beauty; beauty 



