elaines;
to melt the beautiful into iron and brass, and copper, as well as into
silver and gold; so that our manufacturers and artisans may hold their
own against the competition of England and France and Germany, whereof
in the two latter countries especially, schools of design have long
existed, and high artists find their account in furnishing the
beautiful to manufacturers.

"A low origin this for such a society, and the fruits will be without
flavor. Art will not submit to be so lowered," will say some travelled
dilettante, who, with book in hand, has looked by rote on the wonders
of the Louvre and the Vatican; but the Creator of the universe teaches
a different lesson from this observer. Not the rare lightning merely,
but the daily sunlight, too; not merely the distant star-studded
canopy of the earth, but also our near earth itself, has He made
beautiful. He surrounds us with beauty; He envelops us in beauty.
Beauty is spread out on the familiar grass, glows in the daily flower,
glistens in the dew, waves in the commonest leafy branch. All about
us, in infinite variety, beauty is lavished by God in sights
and sounds, and odors. Now, in using the countless and multifarious
substances that are put within our reach, to be by our ingenuity and
contrivance wrought into materials for our protection and comfort, and
pleasure, it becomes us to--it is part of his design that we
shall--follow the divine example, so that in all our handiwork, as in
his, there shall be beauty, so much as the nature of each product is
susceptible of. That it is the final purpose of Providence that our
whole life, inward and outward, shall be beautiful, and be steeped in
beauty, we have evidence, in the yearnings of the best natures for the
perfect, in the delight we take in the most resplendent objects of art
and nature, in the ennobling thrill we feel on witnessing a beautiful
deed.

By culture we can so create and multiply beauty, that all our
surroundings shall be beautiful.

Can you not imagine a city of the size of this, or vastly larger, the
structure of whose streets and buildings shall be made under the
control of the best architectural ideas, being of various stones and
marbles, and various in style and color, so that each and every one
shall be either light, or graceful, or simple, or ornate, or solid,
or grand, according to its purpose, and the conception of the
builder; and in the midst and on the borders of the city, squares,