Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/203

ON VISION Fortunately, the true vision is not a rare endowment. By the grace of God many of us are born with the sense of beauty; and even if we are gifted with but a tiny spark, this spark can be fostered until it grows into a clear and luminous flame whose light will transform the most commonplace scene or object into a vision of infinite loveliness. If we look always for beauty we shall come at last to find it in the most unexpected places and under many strange garbs. But the true vision means not only the power to see and to recognize beauty, but the power to see it stripped of all vulgarities and inessentials; the power to see the soul of the thing and to grasp its essential beauty. For any landscape has a soul as well as a body. Its body is our great rock-ribbed mother-earth with her endless expanse of fields and [155]