One marvels at a building so vast in size which yet produces the effect of a palace in fairyland, or of a cathedral not built with hands but brought into existence by a miracle.
I began to think it not safe to stay in that place too long lest it should compel me to stay there always or cause me to feel dissatisfied and homesick when away.
But the interior of itself would never have won me, as I had not expected to be won by any building made by man; and from the inside I would pass out only to find a fresh charm in that part where Nature had come more to man's aid.
Walking on the cathedral green one morning, glancing from time to time at the vast building and its various delicate shades of colour, I asked myself why I kept my eyes as if on purpose away from it most of the time, now on the trees, then on the turf, and again on some one walking there--why, in fact, I allowed myself only an occasional glance at the object I was there solely to look at.

I knew well enough, but had never put it into plain words for my own satisfaction.
We are all pretty familiar from experience with the limitations of the sense of smell and the fact that agreeable odours please us only fitfully; the sensation comes as a pleasing shock, a surprise, and is quickly gone.

If we attempt to keep it for some time by deliberately smelling a fragrant flower or any perfume, we begin to have a sense of failure as if we had exhausted the sense, keen as it was a moment ago.
There must be an interval of rest for the nerve before the sensation can be renewed in its first freshness.

Now it is the same, though in a less degree, with the more important sense of sight.

We look long and steadily at a thing to know it, and the longer and more fixedly we look the better, if it engages the reasoning faculties; but an aesthetic pleasure cannot be increased or retained in that way.