Page:Early Reminiscences.djvu/407

 1864 339 Ruskin, in his Modern Painters, condemns the Venetian school of artists for neglecting expression and concentrating their efforts on colour and detail. " They very nearly ignore expression altogether, directing their aim exclusively to the rendering of external truths of colour and form. Paul Veronese will make the Magdalene wash the feet of Christ with a countenance as absolutely unmoved as that of any ordinary servant bringing a ewer to her master." If Miss Smith had been called to the same task as the Magdalen, she would have put on her best frock, hung her ears with pendants, arranged her skirts in graceful folds, and have presented to the Saviour of the World the same wooden face. Miss Smith would be " the fair, the chaste, the inexpressive she," though not quite in the sense in which Orlando employed the last epithet. However lovely may be a mountain landscape with its serrated peaks, under a sapphire sky, yet its beauty is incomparably enhanced when clouds drift across the blue vault, and spill soft shadows ; and transient lights make the mountain tops flame, revealing ridges of gold, and gulfs of gentian-blue. And how often a quiet English scene, where are no prominent features, only swaths of pasture, and tufted woods, where naught stands high save the church tower, and nothing glitters save the cottage windows—how often does this homely beauty, so commonplace to the eye in general, become transformed by passing shafts of sunshine, and sliding shadows, till the heart is melted by its surpassing and appealing loveliness. And it is just the same with the human face. The most perfect Grecian contour, the most lustrous eyes, the most delicate complexion, how can they speak to the heart if unkindled, unshadowed by expression ? How a thousand times, nay, tens of thousand times, have we seen homely faces, destitute of extraordinary beauty, yet full of surpassing charm, due solely to the gleams of gentle love, and the shadows of tender sympathy, gliding over those in themselves characterless features, all the beauty consisting in expression, expression, not due, as in the landscape, to any extraneous gleams and glooms, but to the flashes and darklings of the soul within. And how marvellously does this beauty speak to, conquer and captivate the heart !