These are of course merely idiosyncrasies of perception; but it is a far more difficult task to attempt to indicate what the perception of beauty is, and whence the mind derives the unhesitating canons with which it judges and appraises beauty.  The reason, I believe, why the sense is weaker than it need be in many people, is that, instead of trusting their own instinct in the matter, they from their earliest years endeavour to correct their perception of what is beautiful by the opinions of other people, and to superimpose on their own taste the taste of others.  I myself hold strongly that nothing is worth admiring which is not admired sincerely.  Of course, one must not form one’s opinions too early, or hold them arrogantly or self-sufficiently.  If one finds a large number of people admiring or professing to admire a certain class of objects, a certain species of scene, one ought to make a resolute effort to see what it is that appeals to them.  But there ought to come a time, when one has imbibed sufficient experience, when one should begin to decide and to distinguish, and to form one’s own taste.  And then I believe it is better to be individual than catholic, and better to attempt to feed one’s own genuine sense of preference, than to continue attempting to correct it by the standard of other people.

It remains that the whole instinct for admiring beauty is one of the most mysterious experiences of the mind.  There are certain things, like the curves and colours of flowers, the movements of young animals, that seem to have a perennial attraction for the human spirit.  But the enjoyment of natural scenery, at all events of wild and rugged prospects, seems hardly to have existed among ancient writers, and to have originated as late as the eighteenth century.  Dr. Johnson spoke of mountains with disgust, and Gray seems to have been probably the first man who deliberately cultivated a delight in the sight of those “monstrous creatures of God,” as he calls mountains.  Till his time, the emotions that “nodding rocks” and “cascades” gave our forefathers seem mostly to have been emotions of terror; but Gray seems to have had a perception of the true quality of landscape beauty, as indeed that wonderful, chilly, unsatisfied, critical nature seems to have had of almost everything.  His letters are full of beautiful vignettes, and it pleases me to think that he visited Rydal and thought it beautiful, about the time that Wordsworth first drew breath.

But the perception of beauty in art, in architecture, in music, is a far more complicated thing, for there seem to be no fixed canons here; what one needs in art, for instance, is not that things should be perfectly seen and accurately presented; a picture of hard fidelity is often entirely displeasing; but one craves for a certain sense of personality, of emotion, of inner truth; something that seizes tyrannously upon the soul, and makes one desire more of the intangible and indescribable essence.