ms best. And I really think that the fact of these
combinations being presented to us, as they are by the action of the
instrument, arranged in ordered shapes, is a help to the judgment in
deciding on the harmonies of colour. It is natural that it should be so.
"Order is Heaven's first law." And it is right that we should rejoice in
things ordered and arranged, as the savage in his string of beads, and
reasonable that we should find it easier to judge them in order rather
than confused.

Each in his place. How good a thing it is! how much to be desired! how
well if we ourselves could be so, and know of the pattern that we make!
For our lives are like the broken bits of glass, sadly or brightly
coloured, jostled about and shaken hither and thither, in a seeming
confusion, which yet we hope is somewhere held up to a light in which
each one meets with his own, and holds his place; and, to the Eye that
watches, plays his part in a universal harmony by us, as yet, unseen.

[1] West of the road between Welwyn and Hitchin.

CHAPTER XVII

OF ARCHITECTURAL FITNESS

Come, in thought, reader, and stand in quiet village churches, nestling
amongst trees where rooks are building; or in gaps of the chalk downs,
where the village shelters from the wind; or in stately cathedrals,
where the aisles echo to the footstep and the sound of the chimes comes
down, with the memory of the centuries which have lived and died. Here
the old artists set their handmark to live now they are gone, and we who
see it today see, if our eye be single, with what sincerity they built,
carved, or painted their heart and life into these stones. In such a
spirit and for such a memorial you too must do your work, to be weighed
by the judgment of the coming ages, when you in turn are gone, in the
same balance as theirs--perhaps even side by side with it.

And will you dare to venture? Have no fear if you also bring your best.
But if we enter on work like this as to a mere market for our wares, and
with no other thought than to make a brisk business with those that buy
and sell; we well may pray that some merciful scourge of small cords
drive us also hence to dig or beg (which is more honourable), lest worse
befall us!

And I do not say these things because this or that place is "God's
house." All places are so, and the first that was called so was the bare
hillside; but because you are a man and have indeed here arrived, as
there the lonely travell