" It is a direct
instinct, this bracing and yet intoxicating love of beauty for its own
sake. Each nation produces a spiritual type of it, which becomes one of
the deepest national characteristics, and the Celtic type is easily
distinguished. No Celt ever cared for landscape. "It is loveliness I
ask, not lovely things," says Fiona; and it is but a step from this to
that abstract mystical and spiritual love of beauty, which is the very
soul of the Celtic genius. It expresses itself most directly in colours,
and the meaning of them is far more than bright-hued surfaces. The pale
green of running water, the purple and pearl-grey of doves, still more
the remote and liquid colours of the sky, and the sad-toned or the gay
garments of the earth--these are more by far to those who know their
value than pigments, however delicate. They are either a sensuous
intoxication or else a mystic garment of the spirit. Seumas, the old
islander, looking seaward at sunrise, says, "Every morning like this I
take my hat off to the beauty of the world." And as we read we think of
Mr. Neil Munro's lord of Doom Castle walking uncovered in the night
before retiring to his rest, and with tears welling in his eyes
exclaiming that the mountains are his evening prayer.
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