THE BEAUTIFUL. 101 



The sky, blue, serene, immaculate, would no longer 

 awaken an emotion. The distant star would send its an- 

 cient light to eyes leaden as those of the hound upon the 

 porch. The exquisite colorings of violet and rose; the 

 universal bloom of spring; the fire in the sunset cloud; 

 the spirit hum of the breezy forest; the many-voiced 

 chorus of morning birds; the dark green depths of the 

 ocean, brooding over the wrecked argosies of a human 

 race, these all would be mere plain facts to apprehend, 

 not inspirations on which to soar. The cloud might water 

 the scorching crop without diffusing a radiance of super- 

 nal light from its brow, or hanging the love-tinted bow 

 upon its bosom. The hill-side stream might convey its 

 comfort to the thirsty beast without making all the air 

 vocal with a music which causes the human heart to leap 

 for joy. Man would be able to subsist without pansies, and 

 mocking-birds, and rainbows, and stars. If every object 

 were brown and square to the visual sense, if every taste 

 were bitter as aloes, and every sound the grating of a 

 file, and every fragrance the fetor of putrescence, man 

 would still be able to live; family relations might sub- 

 sist; science might not become extinct, and religion might 

 linger as a sapless tree in a rainless clime. 



But such a world is not ours. Such a world does not 

 exist. God loves beauty, and because he loves it he has 

 made everything beautiful, and because we are like God 

 we love the beautiful, and participate in the happiness of 

 God. 



The beauty which fills the world is as abundant and 

 as free as the sunlight, nay, sunlight and starlight in 

 all their infinite wanderings are the very vehicles of 

 beauty to every world and to every intelligence. There 



