The orator looked so pointedly at _me_ as he uttered these words, that I felt bound to reply, by murmuring something to the effect that I hardly felt the need _myself_—and that I enjoyed looking at a thing, better, when I could _see_ it.
“Quite so!” the great man sharply took me up. “From _your_ point of view, that is correctly put. But for any one who has a soul for _Art_, such a view is preposterous. _Nature_ is one thing. _Art_ is another. _Nature_ shows us the world as it _is_. But _Art_—as a Latin author tells us—_Art_, you know—the words have escaped my memory——”
“_Ars est celare Naturam_,” Arthur interposed with a delightful promptitude.
“Quite so!” the orator replied with an air of relief. “I thank you! _Ars est celare Naturam_—but that isn’t it.” And, for a few peaceful moments, the orator brooded, frowningly, over the quotation. The welcome opportunity was seized, and _another_ voice struck into the silence.
“What a _lovely_ old ruin it is!” cried a young lady in spectacles, the very embodiment of the March of Mind, looking at Lady Muriel, as the proper recipient of all really _original_ remarks. “And _don’t_ you admire those autumn-tints on the trees? _I_ do, _intensely_!”
Lady Muriel shot a meaning glance at me; but replied with admirable gravity. “Oh yes indeed, indeed! _So_ true!”
“And isn’t it strange,” said the young lady, passing with startling suddenness from Sentiment to Science, “that the mere impact of certain coloured rays upon the Retina should give us such exquisite pleasure?”
“You have studied Physiology, then?” a certain young Doctor courteously enquired.
Arthur slightly smiled. “It seems a paradox, does it not,” he went on, “that the image formed on the Retina should be inverted?”
“It _is_ puzzling,” she candidly admitted. “Why is it we do not _see_ things upside-down?”
“You have never heard the Theory, then, that the _Brain_ also is inverted?”
“No _indeed_! What a _beautiful_ fact! But how is it _proved_?”
“_Thus_,” replied Arthur, with all the gravity of ten Professors rolled into one. “What we call the _vertex_ of the Brain is really its _base_: and what we call its _base_ is really its _vertex_: it is simply a question of _nomenclature_.”
This last polysyllable settled the matter. “How truly delightful!” the fair Scientist exclaimed with enthusiasm. “I shall ask our Physiological Lecturer why he never gave us that _exquisite_ Theory!”