Download or read book Imaginary Portraits written by Walter Pater and published by London : Macmillan. This book was released on 1887 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Almost every people, as we know, has had its legend of a "golden age" and of its return----legends which will hardly be forgotten, however prosaic the world may become, while man himself remains the aspiring, never quite contented being he is. And yet in truth, since we are no longer children, we might well question the advantage of the return to us of a condition of life in which, by the nature of the case, the values of things would, so to speak, lie wholly on their surfaces.