Charm is of course not the same thing as beauty, but only a subdivision of it.  There are many things in nature and in art, from the Matterhorn to “Samson Agonistes,” that have no charm, but that appeal to a different range of emotions, the sublime, the majestic, the awe-inspiring, things in the presence of which we are hardly at ease; but charm is essentially a comfortable quality, something that one gathers to one’s heart, and if there is a mystery about it, as there is about all beautiful things, it is not a mystery of which one would be afraid to know the secret.  Charm is the quality which makes one desire to linger upon one’s pilgrimage, that cries to the soul to halt, to rest, to be content.  It is intimate, reassuring, and appealing; and the shadow of it is the gentle pathos, which is in itself half a luxury of sadness, in the thought that sweet things must have an end.  As Herrick wrote to the daffodils: 

       Stay, stay
     Until the hasting day
       Has run
       But to the evensong: 
     And, having prayed together, we
       Will go with you along.

     We have short time to stay, as you,
       We have as short a spring;
     As quick a growth to meet decay
       As you, or anything.

In such a mood as that there is no sense of terror or despair at the quick-coming onset of death; no more dread of what may be than there is when the hamlet, with its little roofs and tall trees, is folded in the arms of the night, as the sunset dies behind the hill.  Beauty may be a terrible thing, as in the sheeted cataract, with all its boiling eddies, or in the falling of the lightning from the womb of the cloud.  There is desolation behind that, gigantic movement, ruthless force; but charm comes like a signal of security and good-will, and even its inevitable end is lit with something of mercy and quietness.  The danger of charm is that it is the mother of sentiment; and the danger of sentiment is not that it is untrue, but that it takes from us the sense of proportion; we begin to be unable to do without our little scenes and sunsets; and the eye gets so used to dwelling upon the flower-strewn pleasaunce, with its screening trees, that it cannot bear to face the far horizon, with its menace of darkness and storm.

Yet we are very grateful to those who can teach us to turn our eyes to the charm which surrounds us, and a life which is lived without such perception is apt to be a rough and hurrying thing, even though it may also be both high and austere.  Like most of life, the true success lies in not choosing one force and neglecting another, but in an expectant kind of compromise.  The great affairs and facts of life flash upon us, whether we will or no; and even the man whose mind is bent upon the greatest hopes and aims may find strength and consolation in the lesser and simpler delights.  Mighty spirits like, let us say, Carlyle and Ruskin, were not hampered or