"You seem not to care about cameos," said Will, seating himself at some
distance from her, and observing her while she closed the cases.
"No, frankly, I don't think them a great object in life," said Dorothea
"I fear you are a heretic about art generally. How is that? I should
have expected you to be very sensitive to the beautiful everywhere."
"I suppose I am dull about many things," said Dorothea, simply. "I
should like to make life beautiful--I mean everybody's life. And then
all this immense expense of art, that seems somehow to lie outside life
and make it no better for the world, pains one. It spoils my enjoyment
of anything when I am made to think that most people are shut out from
it."
"I call that the fanaticism of sympathy," said Will, impetuously. "You
might say the same of landscape, of poetry, of all refinement. If you
carried it out you ought to be miserable in your own goodness, and turn
evil that you might have no advantage over others. The best piety is
to enjoy--when you can. You are doing the most then to save the
earth's character as an agreeable planet. And enjoyment radiates. It
is of no use to try and take care of all the world; that is being taken
care of when you feel delight--in art or in anything else. Would you
turn all the youth of the world into a tragic chorus, wailing and
moralizing over misery? I suspect that you have some false belief in
the virtues of misery, and want to make your life a martyrdom." Will
had gone further than he intended, and checked himself. But Dorothea's
thought was not taking just the same direction as his own, and she
answered without any special emotion--
"Indeed you mistake me. I am not a sad, melancholy creature. I am
never unhappy long together. I am angry and naughty--not like Celia: I
have a great outburst, and then all seems glorious again. I cannot
help believing in glorious things in a blind sort of way. I should be
quite willing to enjoy the art here, but there is so much that I don't
know the reason of--so much that seems to me a consecration of ugliness
rather than beauty. The painting and sculpture may be wonderful, but
the feeling is often low and brutal, and sometimes even ridiculous.
Here and there I see what takes me at once as noble--something that I
might compare with the Alban Mountains or the sunset from the Pincian
Hill; but that makes it the greater pity that there is so little of the
best kind among all that mass of things over which men have toiled so."