of Edinburgh , Session 1867-68. 177 
arts should be introduced into our schools and universities. If we 
cannot teach the arts of the architect, the painter, the sculptor, 
and the manufacturer, we can at least exhibit and explain the 
most interesting of their works, and thus cultivate in some degree 
the public taste. There is hardly a neighbourhood where machinery 
for almost every art, and where the works of the ancient masters, 
may not be shown at stated periods to the young; while by the 
facilities of locomotion our galleries of art and our museums of 
industry may be visited by the humblest of our schools. But even 
under the village roof-tree we may cultivate the taste, and add 
to the happiness of its inmates. We may decorate their walls 
by permanent photographs of the finest specimens of painting 
and sculpture, and through the stereoscope they may gaze, as if 
on solid marble, upon the Apollo Belvidere, the Laocoon, and 
the Venus de Medicis, or upon the modern productions of Canova, 
Thorwaldsen, and Chantry. Even in the plain furnishings and 
simple utensils of the cottage we may refine the tastes and elevate 
the sentiments of the hardworking children of toil. The beautiful 
in art and nature, equally the gift of the great Giver, may be 
enjoyed by the humblest of our race. The cup of cold water will 
taste the sweeter, and the goblet of wine the richer, when the eye 
rests with pleasure on their lovely forms. The village Lavinia 
will be “ adorned the most” when she has exchanged the apparel of 
the ball-room for the simple drapery of a less luxurious age. Nor 
will the cottage family be less joyous when, in their plot of flower- 
garden, they revel in the harmonies of colour, or when the mantel- 
piece or walls of their dwelling exhibit to them the choicest forms 
of art, or those scenes of the picturesque or the sublime with which 
modern science can so cheaply supply them. 
The pleasures of the eye and the ear are the cheapest and 
sweetest of our luxuries, and when they shall be equally appreciated 
by the classes whom no common sympathy had previously blended, 
or whom the usages of a barbarous age had too widely severed, 
society will be welded by more enduring bonds, and new buttresses 
added to the social fabric. The artisan or the labourer who devotes 
his leisure hour to the observation of nature or the admiration of 
art, who gathers for his family the curious plant or the travelled 
pebble, or who presents to them the elegant flower vase or the 
