their being they, also, must find beauty. Immortality must bring beauty with it.

In so far as the saints have been unlovely, they have been undeveloped; in so far as the heroes have lacked harmony and sweetness, they have lacked maturity in righteousness and strength. There has been but one perfect life on earth, and the beauty of that life was the effluence of its righteousness, the radiance of its divinity. Christ had all the strength of the heroic fighters for truth, without a touch of their harshness and unloveliness; he had all the courage of the reformers, without a trace of their narrow-mindedness, their lackof imagination; he had the calmness of the seeker after the truth with no touch of his indifference to individuals. He was so harmonious that we find it almost impossible to comprehend him. He reverses all the conceptions of the saint, and the hero, and the great man that have been held from time to time; he utterly failed to meet the expectations of those who had long watched for the com

home in His speech as in the air, the fields, and the sky. In gesture, deed, and word; in all the crises of His life and in the presence of all men; in joy and sorrow, in death and in resurrection, beauty clothed Him like a garment. As He was Truth, so He was Beauty; for truth, when it ascends to the highest stage and there finds its final expression, is also beauty.

In beautiful forms, therefore, the soul "craves the image of its own beauty and the emblems of its own immortality." This craving is none the less real because it is often unintelligent; it is instinctive

ing of a great Messiah. So accustomed are we to imperfect development, with its confusions of violence with force, of ruthlessness with strength, of selfishness with genius, that we cannot easily reconcile the beauty of Christ's nature with its immeasurable resources. When the creative artist appeared among us, He was beautiful because He was divine. His words shared the beauty of the world, and in parable and teaching He associated these forms with the spiritual life. Birds and flowers and stars are as much at

in all men who have any spiritual vitality; and there are many persons to whom ugly inharmonious surroundings bring what is very similar to physical pain. Sin in all its forms is only hideous; so it

can neverwear

beauty save as a mask, and it cannot wear

it long. In the exact degree in which we hate sin do we also long for the beauty of holiness, inthe exact degree in which we long for perfection do we also crave the beauty in life, form and manner about us, that will cor

respond with the inner vision. So long as we lack that harmony we are driven back upon ourselves and become the prey of that dissatisfaction which always springs out of discord. When we come upon perfect beauty in any form, a sudden thrill warns us that we are facing one of those last perfect touches in which an idea, a vision, an experience, is born into and vitalizes a form. So in all the greatest art we seem to find ourselves; and in finding ourselves we instinctively confer immortality upon thej form which shares

our life.

An artist pours his life into his book, his statue, his building, his picture, with the conviction that he has laid up for himself that fame which is the human synonym for immortality; and men guard and cherish the perfect work because, being perfect, they are persuaded that it must endure. So the marbles remain though the Greeks are gone; the Madonna survives though Raphael has departed; the Fifth Symphony speaks Symphony speaks though Beethoven is silent; Westminster abides though its builders have perished. In its art the race sees the visible emblems of its immortality.-The Outlook.

Can we do better than to enlist the influence of the Beautiful in the School-room? Good taste, in most cases, is surely due to culture

rather than to the intuitive appreciation and recognition of beauty. It is rather a matter of nurture than of nature; we seldom stop to think how much of our own boasted taste is due to the environment we had as little children, to the rugs that were on the floors, to the pictures on the walls, the chairs we sat

on, the dishes

ain't no sign of a break-up in this yer hot weather." To him the piled up glories of gold and purple and amber and amethyst serve only as weather forecasts. It is the same with many a good girl. Year after year, spring, summer, autumn, may lead their flowery train across the hills, and over the fields, right under her very eyes violets, azaleas, daisies, asters, golden-rod-but to her all "them wild things" are alike, "jes' weeds." It is because these people are utterly devoid of this feeling for the beautiful that their lives are so pitifully empty and bare. Do you remember what Landor says in that exquisite prose-lyric of his, The Child in the House ?-" and. in thinking of the very poor, it was not the things that

most men care most for that he yearned to give them, but it was fairer roses, perhaps, and power to taste at ease but not so task burdened, a cer tain desirable clear light in the

early morn, thro' which sometimes he noticed them, all un conscious of it, upon

their way to

their early

toil." This

by our elders. At what a disadvantage, then, is the child whose home or school is lacking in everything that makes for artistic development. Take, for example, many a child who attends our rural schools, and our town schools as well, what is there to develop in him a love of the beautiful? "Nature!" some one enthusiastically exclaims. Yes, but the appreciation of natural beauty is itself a cultivated faculty. The uncultured boy that I have in mind would look unmoved upon a sunset that must be the despair of a painter and the joy of a poet, and turn away saying, drawlingly, "I 'low as how it's a-gwine to rain to-morrow," or "Thar

more for these people, to open their eyes to the wonder and glory of the natural world, than to give them food and clothing. The greatest possible good that could be done them would be to arouse them from their dull, apathetic, dead selves to a sense of the joy of living; to give them "beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness." We can only hope to do this, even then only approximately, by beginning with the children. And here is the great opportunity of the teacher, to develop some sense of the beautiful in the children committed to his or her care. The task may

seem Herculean as we look into the faces of the boys and girls before us and then around the bare, unattractive schoolroom. What shall we do? Where make a beginning? I would say: Decorate the walls. I am not calling for any large outlay of money. Fine pictures, choice subjects and of size large enough for good wall decoration, can be had at low prices; and in this day of the illustrated magazine, pictures may be found in many of them that are worthy a place in the schoolroom. Such pictures should be cut out and mounted upon heavy paper of a suitable color, for the contrast. Place them upon the walls in groups, not very high. Let the pupils become accustomed to them, so as to get all out of them that seems

to distract the attention. Work that is done amid pleasant surroundings is pleasant work and therefore nearly always good work. Let me tell a suggestive little story that serves to illustrate my point: "A party of women were given the privilege of inspecting a factory devoted to the manufacture of thread. Their guide was the proprietor of the factory, one of the largest in the world. What most impressed the visitors, however, was not the size and evident prosperity of the plant, but the beauty of the place. Not only was every hygienic and commercial comfort

eye of an artist. It is false to suppose that a child's sense of beauty is dependent on any choiceness or especial fitness in the objects which present themselves to it. The child will not notice the crude coloring and the disproportion in drawing, but will find oftentimes something there, that we perhaps cannot see, to minister to its sense of beauty. And, finally, don't for one moment entertain the false notion that children will study better in an utterly bare room where there is nothing

attended to but, so far as was possible, every æsthetical consideration wasobserved here as well, by the careful and intelligent owner. Round the wall of each of the spacious, wellwindowed, pleasingly attractive apartments where most of the work was under way and to be finished for market, there ran a broad and exquisitely painted bor der (frieze), the figures on the frieze

in color, as in form, fit

to grace the walls of a dwelling rather than a mill. Finally one of the women, a practical, plain-spoken dame, asked the owner why he made beauty such an object. 'I don't see the use of a frieze like that in a factory,' she said bluntly; why do you have it?' The mill-owner smiled. 'Well, it is a very practical reason,' he said; 'I find it makes better thread." So good pictures on school-room walls make better pupils. For beauty is a spiritual force and always has the saving power of "making good."

The silent influence of a great picture is immeasurable. In the plastic, impressionable period of childhood their influence is especially great, dropping as they do their seeds of influence into the deepest places of the child's nature, there to fructify and develop until the whole nature of the child is leavened. Childhood is the period when all the various faculties of the soul are the most deeply stirred; when, as some one finely says, "the spirit is finding itself and feeling the beauty of the world; when all nature is whispering its secrets of beauty and of power and of knowledge. For such a plastic time, nothing that can inspire or enrich and ennoble is too good, and for

this reason one of the best and highest uses to which good pictures can be put is to arouse and feed the mind of childhood. Because the child passes a large part of his time in the school-room, its influence is often much greater than the influence of the home.

word and question, the motive of each picture should be brought out, its story, etc., also the main points in the art of the picture, the main principles of its composition that give it its place in the love of mankind, and that, explained to the child, will afford him a standard by which to judge other pictures. In short, those main artistic qualities should be pointed out which develop the imagination and sentiment, and also fortify the judgment against inferior art.-Estella A. Sharp.

In selecting pictures, be guided largely by the child's ability to comprehend and

For this reason, which all must admit, he should have beautiful pictures about him in the school-room from first to last, from his primary to his senior year. Owing to his extreme susceptibility to impressions, only noble and serious art should hang upon the school-room walls. The pictures should be of a character to form a hunger, a real hunger after the best. for twelve years the child could be thus habituated to see the true and the beautiful, he would come to hate ugliness. As a child, he would not be attracted by the hideous posters upon our bill-boards nor by the coarse pictures that too often cir

to interpret, rather than from the merits of a picture judged, as some will insist upon, from the critically artistic standpoint. Pictures that are capable of being understood by the first grade pupils may not be best suited for the grade of advanced high school, but in either case the artistic finish of the pictures chosen by the teacher, the superintendent, or other wise friend of fast growing youth in the

schools should always be carefully considered. The chief obstacle to be overcome in permanent decoration is the difficulty of obtaining really good pictures at slight expense. This has led many teachers to decorate their rooms with pictures very poor in conception and execution, simply because they were cheap. In response to the universal demand for good pictures at reasonable prices, beautiful half-tone reproductions of the masterpieces of art may now be had at prices so low that the poorest may become the possessor of one or more good pictures. The Lincoln Art Series adds to the list.