That, I suppose,
is why we call them ever young. They beckon to all of us familiarly and
yet, as it were, from an unexplored world. They speak to us at all
seasons in some loving and yet enigmatical language, such language as
we may read, at times, in the eyes of a child that wakes from sleep.
Now the swiftest and fairest steam-engine in the world is not for ever
young; it grows obsolete and ends, after a short life, on the
scrap-heap. That is to say, where usefulness enters, this spirit of
mystery, of eternal youth, is put to flight. And there is yet another
element of classical beauty which is equally at variance with your
modern conception of it: the element of authority. Beholding the
Praxitelean Eros, the veriest ruffian feels compelled to reverence the
creator and his work. 'Who was the man?' he asks; for he acknowledges
that such things impose themselves upon his untutored mind. Now a
certain Monsieur Cadillac builds the most beautiful motor-cars. Who is
this man? We do not care a fig about him.
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