2l6 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



art combining the mechanical and decorative in one ; 

 and oratory, perhaps the highest form of genuine 

 prose, illustrates this fact with the greatest clearness. 

 Such confusions and oversights as are involved 

 in the misapprehension which has just been exposed, 

 might be prevented if we grouped the whole series 

 of arts as mechanical and fine, and subdivided fine 

 arts into decorative and esemplastic, recognising that 

 in architecture we have the nodal point of ascending 

 transition from the decorative to the creative. 



As I reach the end of this over-prolonged inquiry, 



in its unavoidable hardness and dryness so little 



akin to the fair attraction of its theme, there float 



into my memory, as a poetic pointing of our search's 



moral, these lines of Emerson's, from his fragment 



called The Test : — 



I hung my verses in the wind, — 

 Time and tide their faults should find ! 

 All were winnowed through and through : 

 Five lines lasted sound and true ! 

 Sunshine cannot bleach the snow, 

 Nor time unmake what Poets know. 

 Ha7>e yoH eyes to find the five 

 Which five hundred did survi7ie ? 



