Again: the influence of surprise

§ 22. Again: the influence of surprise in producing the delight, is to be noted as a suspicious or evanescent element in it. Observe, my pleasure was chiefly (§ 19.) when I first got into beautiful scenery, out of London. The enormous influence of novelty—the way in which it quickens observation, sharpens sensation, and exalts sentiment—is not half enough taken note of by us, and is to me a very sorrowful matter. I think that what Wordsworth speaks of as a glory in the child, because it has come fresh from God's hands, is in reality nothing more than the freshness of all things to its newly opened sight. I find that by keeping long away from hills, I can in great part still restore the old childish feeling about them; and the more I live and work among them, the more it vanishes. reproduction oil paintings for sale
§ 23. This evil is evidently common to all minds; Wordsworth himself mourning over it in the same poem:

"Custom hangs upon us, with a weightHeavy as frost, and deep almost as life."

And if we grow impatient under it, and seek to recover the mental energy by more quickly repeated and brighter novelty, it is all over with our enjoyment. There is no cure for this evil, any more than for the weariness of the imagination already described, but in patience and rest: if we try to obtain perpetual change, change itself will become monotonous; and then we are reduced to that old despair, "If water chokes, what will you drink after it?" And the two points of practical wisdom in this matter are, first, to be content with as little novelty as possible at a time; and, secondly, to preserve, as much as possible in the world, the sources of novelty. art oil painting reproduction