So persistently does the human ear rebel against the division of the tetrachord into two greater tones and a leimma or hemitone, as represented by the fractions 9, 9, 26, that, centuries before the possibility of reconciling the demands of the ear with those of exact science was satisfactorily demonstrated, the Aristoxenian school advocated the use of an empirical scale, sounding pleasant to the sense, in preference to an unpleasing tonality founded upon immutable proportions.
Two faults, however, marred the workfirst, the shapes were clumsy and unpleasing, being copied from bronzes whose solidity justified forms unsuited to thin enamelled vessels; secondly, the colors, sombre and somewhat impure, lacked the glow and mellowness that give decorative superiority to the technically inferior Chinese enamels of the later Ming and early Tsing eras.
The plot is both improbable and unpleasing.
Some good judges attribute the peculiar and not unpleasing flavour of certain clarets of 1888 to means thus adopted to kill the phylloxera.
In this more general respect, an arboretum or woodland affords shelter, improves local climate, renovates bad soils, conceals objects unpleasing to the eye, heightens the effect of what is agreeable and graceful, and adds value, artistic and other, to the landscape.
