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■we can see light. Our intelligence, however, weak and finite 

 though it is, can realise and appreciate His operations, and see 

 herein evidence that He has condescended to create us in His 

 Image after His Likeness. But the world is not merely a machine 

 to minister to purposes of utility, it is also a creation of wondrous 

 beauty. It appeals not only to our bodily wants but to our 

 mental and moral perceptions also. It calls forth wonder and 

 admiration, rapture and delight, awe and reverence. It reveals 

 the Supreme Being not merely as a Mathematician, Practical 

 Mechanic, Engineer and Artificer, but as an Artist, Architect, a 

 Lover and Creator of the Beautiful. 



Nature our Guide to the Beautiful. 

 If we want to understand the principles of Beauty we must 

 study and copy nature. Our own intelligence and imagination 

 must be brought to bear to present it under such aspects as may 

 suit the purpose we have in view, but true art, design or beauty 

 must ever rest upon the basis of unperverted nature. Euskin 

 points out that good Art interprets nature and is not content sim- 

 ply to imitate. The three schools of perfect Art, he says, those 

 of Athens, Florence and Venice had for their " primal aim the 

 representation of some natural fact as truly as possible." At 

 Athens it was the form of the human body, at Florence the 

 effects of passions in the human face and gesture, at Venice the 

 representation of colour and shade. Euskin attributes the 

 decline and fall of ancient nations largely to the introduction of 

 the non-natural in art. The rejection of nature by the artistic 

 world was however, only one of the many symptoms of decay 

 marking a nation in its times of greatest material prosperity, 

 when it has descended to inglorious ease, sloth and sensuality, 

 become unnatural in its passions as well as artificial in its tastes, 

 and has neglected to look up through Nature to Nature's God. 



Human Beauty. 



I can put forward no claim ,to any infallible prescription by 

 which we can at once or at all determine what belle has the 

 right to carry off the bell. By a beneficent arrangement each 

 happy couple solves the question for themselves in a manner 

 mutually agreeable. Should there be unanimous or even general 

 agreement as to the supereminent charms of one happy fair in 

 Burnley, what a distraction of rival claimants to be the beau to 

 win the belle would ensue ! We have ancient authority as to 

 the evil consequences resulting from trying to solve the question 

 "Who is the most beautiful?" It was the goddess of Discord 

 who threw the golden apple into the midst of the banquet of 

 the gods, inscribed with the words "To be given to the most 

 beautiful." The gods, very sagely for their own domestic peace, 



