My lady looks so gentle and so pure When yielding salutation by the way, That the tongue trembles and has nought to say, And the eyes, which fain would see, may not endure. And still, amid the praise she hears secure, She walks with humbleness for her array; Seeming a creature sent from Heaven, to stay On earth, and show a miracle made sure. She is so pleasant in the eyes of men That through the sight the inmost heart doth gain A sweetness which needs proof to know it by; And from between her lips there seems to move A soothing essence that is full of love, Saying for ever to the spirit: "Sigh!" (Rossetti's translation, Dante's _Vita nuova_, section XXVI.) A very different impression must have been made on the self-respect and delicate sensibility of a feminine soul by this other sonnet, which is clumsy and bombastic because it is full of inappropriate and exaggerated metaphors: Your salutation and your glances bright Deal death to him who greets you on your way; Love my assailant, heedless of my plight, Cares nought if what he does shall heal or slay. Straight to the mark his arrow flew apace Piercing my heart and cleaving it in twain; I was as one who sees Death face to face; No word I spake--so great my burning pain. As through the window of the lordly tower The missile hurtles, shattering all within, So did the arrow enter through my eye; Bereft of life and spirit in that hour I stood there, to a man of brass akin, That mocks with semblance of humanity. (Guinizelli, 1300.) If, then, the true basis of the imagination is reality, and its perception is related to exactness of observation, it is necessary to prepare children to perceive the things in their environment exactly, in order to secure for them the material required by the imagination. Further, the exercise of the intelligence, reasoning within sharply defined limits, and distinguishing one thing from another, prepares a cement for imaginative constructions; because these are the more beautiful the more closely they are united to a form, and the more logical they are in the association of individual images. The fancy which exaggerates and invents coarsely does not put the child on the right road. A true preparation digs the beds where the waters which well up from intellectual creation will flow in smiling or majestic rivers, without overflowing and so destroying the beauty of internal order.