It is not as a rule the calm and controlled people who have this attractiveness for others; it is rather those who unite with an enchanting kind of playfulness an instinct to confide in and to depend upon protective affection.  Very probably there is some deep-seated sexual impulse involved, however remotely and unconsciously, in this species of charm.  It is the appeal of the child that exults in happiness, claims it as a right, uses it with a pretty petulance,—­like the feigned enmity of the kitten and the puppy,—­ and when it is clouded over, requires tearfully that it shall be restored.  That may seem an undignified comparison for a prince of the church.  But Newman was artist first, and theologian a long way afterward; he needed comfort and approval and even applause; and he evoked, together with love and admiration, the compassion and protective chivalry of his friends.  His writings have little logical or intellectual force; their strength is in their ineffable and fragrant charm, their ordered grace, their infinite pathos.

The Greek word for this subtle kind of beauty is charis, and the Greeks are worth hearing on the subject, because they, of all the nations that ever lived, were penetrated by it, valued it, looked out for it, worshipped it.  The word itself has suffered, as all large words are apt to suffer, when they are transferred to another language, because the big, ultimate words of every tongue connote a number of ideas which cannot be exactly rendered by a single word in another language.  Let us be mildly philological for a moment, and realise that the word charis in Greek is the substantive of which the verb is chairo, to rejoice.  We translate the word charis by the English word “grace,” which means, apart from its theological sense, a rich endowment of charm and beauty, a thing which is essentially a gift, and which cannot be captured by taking thought.  When we say that a thing is done with a perfect grace, we mean that it seems entirely delightful, appropriate, seemly, and beautiful.  It pleases every sense; it is done just as it should be done, easily, courteously, gently, pleasantly, with a confidence which is yet modest, and with a rightness that has nothing rigid or unamiable about it.  To see a thing so done, whatever it may be, leaves us with an envious desire that we might do the thing in the same way.  It seems easy and effortless, and the one thing worth doing; and this is where the moral appeal of beauty lies, in the contagious sort of example that it sets.  But when we clumsily translate the word by “grace,” we lose the root idea of the word, which has a certain joyfulness about it.  A thing done with charis is done as a pleasure, naturally, eagerly, out of the heart’s abundance; and that is the appeal of things so done to the ordinary mind, that they seem to well up out of a beautiful and happy nature, as the clear spring rises from the sandy floor of the pool.  The act is done, or the word spoken, out of a tranquil fund of joy, not as a matter of duty, or in reluctant obedience to a principle, but because the thing, whatever it is, is the joyful and beautiful thing to do.