King, Georgiana Goddard: A brief account of the military orders in Spain (New York: The Hispanic Society of America, 1921)

IN SPAIN
185
the landscape of the age of Sung, to stir
the spirit, and woo it and lead it away.
Partly this may be due to the accumulated
associations, by which a wayside stone,
a mountain valley, and the half-ruined
tower of a parish church, can testify of
ancestral virtues or poetic utterance not
to be forgotten by men. Partly, however,
as I think, it is due to the palpable and
visible beauty of the land itself, that actual
and respirable loveliness which is like the
skin and hair of a beautiful woman, thesheer
painting in the picture, the contours and
shadows and patina in the statuary’s art.
The distances, the altitudes, the colourings,
the drift of light and movement of cloud in
Spanish landscape, are present to con-
sciousness like the modulations of sound
and enhancements of concrete imagery
that it lays hold of in some great poetry,
and this I think is a part of the power of
Sung landscape also: the conception that
constantly strives to penetrate beyond the
presentation, and the immediate power of
line and tone that will not let it escape.
and the
magic of
Spanish
landscape
The
sensuous
and the
significant
in beauty
AND MONOGRAPHS