250 
THE MIDDLE LIAS OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. 
wearing of nose and ear-rings; and in dress, from an idyllic 
arrangement of leaves to the highly complicated dress of 
some mighty official, extending to ten or a dozen different 
garments, serving to keep up the empty grandeur of some 
obsolete custom or ceremony. As decoration, we find it 
applied to inanimate objects, as pottery and other household 
utensils ; to weapons of warfare ; to the tombs in which the 
dead are buried; to the temples in which the living worship. 
Art has existed through many centuries, but it does not 
always display individuality. The houses of the poor, almost 
devoid of Art, display, perhaps, as much originality as the 
palaces of the rich ; the hermit’s cell as much as the great 
temples of religion ; the Bible of the early persecuted 
Christians, hidden away in a rude box beneath the floor, as 
much as the elaborately printed volume, with its illuminated 
text,chained to its delicately wrought and polished eagle lectern. 
It is not in elaborate display that individuality is to be found. 
It is in the quiet study, not in the noise of the fashionable 
world ; in the poorly furnished studio, not in the princely 
mansion of the favourite of Society; in the orchard beneath 
the apple tree, or in the kitchen beside the boiling kettle, 
the genius produces for the world his great and individual 
work. It is not true progress of Art when its object has 
been to increase the splendour of some barbaric court, to add 
to the pomp of some powerful monarch. The highest An 
does not, serve for ornament alone, neither does it become 
subservient to the useful. It is for a far higher purpose than this, 
far higher even than to give delight merely. It is to raise the 
souls of all men of all time higher than the highest pinnacle 
they may have previously reached. It is to lift the thoughts 
froip. the contemplation of the mundane to the contemplation 
of the highest good, the great Ideal! This is the object of 
true Art: all other objects that it may have are necessarily 
insignificant when compared with it. 
(To be continued.) 
THE MIDDLE LIAS OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. 
BY BEEBY THOMPSON, F.C.S., F.G.S. 
(Continued from page 236.) 
III.— Would the Water which goes in be Available 
for our Use ? 
I have had to refer, repeatedly, to objections urged against 
this water scheme ; these, in many cases, I am pleased to say, 
had the sole object of eliciting explanations ; but whether 
