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The Love of the Beautiful.

lifts her sceptre, an undisputed sovereign; sparkle in every quivering dew-drop, pulsate through the great artery of all creation. And day and night, these glorious witnesses of Beauty's all-pervading existence are chanting in chorus, "Love the beautiful, for those immortal fountains, whence all purity descends, are beauty's well-spring!" And the poet lifts his voice to echo the universal hymn, and sings,

———"thus was Beauty sent from heaven,The lovely ministress of Truth and GoodIn this dark world; for Truth and Good are one,And Beauty dwells in them, and they in her,With like participation. Wherefore, then,O sons of earth! would ye dissolve the tie?"

But the world is not embellished by Beauty which prodigal Nature alone unfolds; her handmaiden Art develops the beautiful with emulating skill, and when she weds a pure creation to a noble use, her brow is radiant with Nature's borrowed crown! The vivid reflex of the painter's genius mirrored upon our walls; the triumph of the sculptor's chisel reared in our homes, are not mere tasteful, profitless luxuries. There is a soul-refining power in their familiar contemplation; they quicken those higher sensibilities which time is making a constant effort to deaden; they find avenues to the dormant heart hitherto undiscovered; they lift the daily thoughts out of the mo-

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