Page:The Book of the Courtier.djvu/471

 THE FOURTH BOOK OF THE COURTIER hold together, and would wreck the world ; they have also such beauty and grace that human wit cannot imagine anything more beautiful. " Think now of the shape of man, which may be called a little world; wherein we see every part of the body precisely com- posed with skill, and not by chance ; and then the whole form together so beautiful that we could hardly decide whether more utility or more grace is given to the human features and the rest of the body by all the members, such as the eyes, nose, mouth, ears, arms, breast, and other parts withal. The same can be said of all the animals. Look at the feathers of birds, the leaves and branches of trees, which are given them by nature to preserve their being, and yet have also very great loveliness. " Leave nature, and come to art. What thing is so necessary in ships as the prow, the sides, the yards, the masts, the sails, the helm, the oars, the anchors and the cordage? Yet all these things have so much comeliness, that it seems to him who looks upon them that they are thus devised as much for beauty as for use. Columns and architraves support lofty galleries and palaces, yet they are not on that account less pleasing to the eyes of him who looks upon them, than useful to the buildings. When men first began to build, they set that middle ridge in their temples and houses, not in order that the buildings might have more grace, but to the end that the water might flow off conveniently on either side; yet to utility soon was added comeliness, so that if a temple were built under a sky where no hail or rain falls, it would not seem able to have any dignity or beauty without the ridge. 59.— " Much praise is therefore bestowed, not only upon other things, but upon the world, by saying that it is beautiful. We praise when we say: 'Beautiful sky, beautiful earth, beautiful sea, beautiful rivers, beautiful lands, beautiful woods, trees, gar- dens; beautiful cities, beautiful churches, houses, armies.' In short, this gracious and sacred beauty gives highest ornament to everything; and we may say that the good and the beautiful are in a way one and the same thing, and especially in the human ^ body; of whose beauty I think the most immediate cause is beauty of the soul, which (as partaker of true divine beauty) brightens and beautifies whatever it touches, and especially if the body 295