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are held among diflferent nations as to what constitutes the 

 highest form of human beauty, and that opinions current in 

 one age on natural scenery, architecture, dress or other subjects 

 which fall under the domain of the beautiful, have been entirely 

 at variance with those held in succeeding ages. Fashion settles 

 the point it is said, and neither in the condition of the human 

 mind nor in the objective universe without, are there to be found 

 any such conditions or harmonies, invariable and unalterable, 

 as are needful to enable us to elaborate or maintain any so-called 



science or system of Beauty The truth lies, I maintain, 



here, as often, between two exti-emes. The materiahstic phil- 

 osophy which endeavours to reduce the Beautiful to compliance 

 with a set of hard and fast mechanical rules, ignores that 

 spiritual element in the human being which is essential to the 

 appreciation or sense of Beauty at all, and which cannot be 

 fettered by any arbitrary regulations, no matter how generally 

 true and useful. Nor can any objects, however they may com- 

 ply with the rules of the philosophy book, strike us as beautiful, 

 from which the living element, the soul, the imagination, the 



sympathy, call it what you will, is lacking Still, though 



we cannot confine the human soul and its powers within the 

 analysis or synthesis of physicists and materialists, yet there 

 are certain rules observable with regard to its operations, which 

 supply us with some universally recognized axioms or canons of 

 the Beautiful. They can only cover a portion of the ground, 

 but they assist us greatly in our survey of it. I say "universally 

 recognised" advisedly, for notwithstanding certain exceptional 

 workings into which men's fashion or fancy may have led them 

 under some special impulse, it is evident from literature and 

 every-day experience that their minds generally have never been 

 similarly attracted by like objects. I need scarcely do more than 

 refer to the Bible for proof of this. The glowing imagery therein 

 employed, the descriptions of natural scenery, the sympathetic 

 illustrations from things small as well as great, from insect, bird 

 and flower as from the sublime thunder-storm, the tempest-tossed 

 ocean, and the star-begemmed vault of heaven ; the admiration 

 and love pervading it for every beautiful existence of God's 

 creation — all arouse an answering chord in every breast, and we 

 recognise that they and we are one in our sense and acknowledg- 

 ment of the beautiful. Like testimony is furnished by the works 

 of genius handed down from Greece and Rome and other nations 

 great and wise in their day and generation. They, no doubt, 

 had their vagaries and fashions, but the product of such abnormal 

 fancy has been allowed to fall into neglect and forgetfuluess, 

 while the permanent embodiment of the principles of true 

 Beauty has been cherished and preserved among the world's 

 precious heirlooms. 



