"'Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind.
Nor hath Love's mind of any judgment taste;
Wings and no eyes, figure unheedy haste.
And therefore is Love said to be a child,
Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.'
Tell me, if you can, what this means. But perhaps you were never in love, Jack, in the old times."
"Romeo was in love before he met Juliet," said Jack. "I, too, have been reading the old books, you see, Child. I remember—but how can I tell you? I cannot speak like the poet. Yet I remember—I remember." He looked round the room. "It is only here," he murmured, "that one can clearly remember. Here are the very things which used to surround our daily life. And here are youth and age. They were always with us in the old time—youth and age. Youth with love before, and age with love behind. Always we knew that as that old man, so should we become. The chief joys of life belonged to youth; we knew very well that unless we snatched them then we should never have them. To age we gave respect, because age, we thought, had wisdom; but to us—to us—who were young, age cried unceasingly—
"'Gather ye rose-buds while ye may.'
If I could tell only you! Christine, come with me into the Picture Gallery. My words are weak, but the poets and the painters speak for us. Come! We shall find something there that will speak for me what I have not words to say for myself."
Nothing in the whole world—I have maintained this in the College over and over again—has done so much harm to Humanity as Art. In a world of common-sense which deals with nothing but fact and actuality, Art can have no place. Why imitate what we see around us? Artists cheated the world; they pretended to imitate, and they distorted or they exaggerated. They put a light into the sky that never was there; they filled the human face with yearning after things impossible; they put thoughts into the heart which had no business there; they made woman into a goddess, and made love—simple love—a form of worship; they exaggerated every joy; they created a heaven which could not exist. I have seen their pictures, and I know it. Why—why did we not destroy all works of Art long ago—or, at least, why did we not enclose the Gallery, with the Museum, within the College wall?
The Picture Gallery is a long room with ancient stone walls; statuary is arranged along the central line, and the pictures line the walls.
The young man led the girl into the Gallery and looked around him. Presently he stopped at a figure in white marble. It represented a woman, hands clasped, gazing upward. Anatomically, I must say, the figure is fairly correct.
"See," he said, "when in the olden times our sculptors desired to depict the Higher Life—which we have lost or thrown away for a while—they carved the marble image of a woman. Her form represented perfect beauty; her face represented perfect purity; the perfect soul must be wedded to the perfect body, otherwise there can be no perfection of Humanity. This is the Ideal Woman. Look in her face, look at the curves of her form, look at the carriage of her head; such a woman it was whom men used to love."
"But were women once like this? Could they look so? Had they such sweet and tender faces? This figure makes me ashamed."