The Ideal Life

Those who have studied the paintings of Sir Noel Paton must have observed that part of their peculiar beauty lies, by a trick of Art, in their partial ugliness. There are flowers and birds, knights and ladies, gossamer-winged fairies and children of seraphic beauty; but in the corner of the canvas, or just at their feet, some uncouth and loathsome form-a toad, a lizard, a slimy snail-to lend, by contrast with its repulsiveness, a lovelier beauty to the rest. So in ancient sculpture the griffin and the dragon grin among the angel faces on the cathedral front, heightening the surrounding beauty by their deformity.