Instead of a simply giving your subjective aesthetic evaluation, based on some measure of "elegance", you could objectively compare, in HCI terms, the usability of the languages as user-interfaces to the computer. A mouse may be more elegant than a keyboard, but for, say, word-processing, it would have comparatively-horrible usability.
Likewise (and this is just a throwaway argument, not the general point I'm trying to make), Lisp may be more elegant conceptually than Ruby, but when trying to find an individual incorrect line of code to make a change, Lisp's "elegant" uniformity actually hinders scanning, whereas Ruby's bumpy, "inelegant" syntax gives your eyes regularized shapes to abstract sections of code into, and thus visually skip them without having to read into their contents.
However, as the mouse's elegance matches well with a paint program, Lisp matches well with Turing-complete data-specifications ("code as data.") Usability is not a one-dimensional spectrum, like your partial ordering of "beauty" above, but rather a consideration made separately for each task an interface is used for.
Actually, despite all the fanfare about LISP, Haskell, Scheme et al, more useful programs have been written and deployed in, say, Python, than all those combined.
What's the last useful LISP program you have used? What proportion does it consist among the other useful programs you use?
I use Scheme/Haskell for most of my scripting purposes, the only exceptions being the cases where I want to make use of some extant library, in which case I switch to Python/Ruby. I used stumpwm for a while, which was written in Common Lisp, and a few months ago switched to XMonad, which is all Haskell. All my editing is done in Emacs, which uses a variety of Lisp (elisp.)
Given that close to 100% of my time is spent in XMonad, and >50% of my time is spent in Emacs, and every session involves at least some interaction with my collection of scripts... I'd say I use quite a lot of useful programs written in those fanfare-laden languages.
Likewise (and this is just a throwaway argument, not the general point I'm trying to make), Lisp may be more elegant conceptually than Ruby, but when trying to find an individual incorrect line of code to make a change, Lisp's "elegant" uniformity actually hinders scanning, whereas Ruby's bumpy, "inelegant" syntax gives your eyes regularized shapes to abstract sections of code into, and thus visually skip them without having to read into their contents.
However, as the mouse's elegance matches well with a paint program, Lisp matches well with Turing-complete data-specifications ("code as data.") Usability is not a one-dimensional spectrum, like your partial ordering of "beauty" above, but rather a consideration made separately for each task an interface is used for.