As we look upon the earth in a glorious summer-day, we feel as if all nature loved us, and that a spirit within is answering to the loving call of the outer world. We feel as if _caressed_ by the beauty floating around—as if the mission of nature were to delight us. And it is so. It was to be a joy for Man that this glorious world sprang out of Chaos, and it was to enjoy it that we were gifted with our many senses of beauty. How narrow the enjoyment of the body to the domain of the spirit! The possessions and enjoyments of man consist less in the acres we can win from our fellows, than in the wide universe around us. Creature-comforts are unequally divided, but the charm of existence, the joy that rays from all nature, are the property of all. Who can set a price upon the colours of the rose or the hues of sunset? Yet, would the Vernon Gallery be an adequate exchange? Water and air, prime necessaries of physical life, are not more free to all, than is its best and highest food everywhere accessible to the spirit. What we want is, to rub the dust of the earth off our souls, and let them mirror the beauty of the universe. What we want is, to open the nature within to the nature without—to clear the mind from ignorance, the heart from prejudice. We must learn to see things as they are—to find beauty in nature, love in man, good everywhere; not to shut our eyes or look through a distorting medium. We scramble for the crumbs of worldly success, and too often have neglected the higher delights that are free to our taking. Like the groveller in the Pilgrim’s Progress, we rake amid straws on the ground, when a crown of joy is ready to descend upon us if we will only look up. We turn aside the river from its bed, and toil in the sand for golden dust, destroying happiness in the search for its symbol, and forget that the world itself may be made golden, that the art of the Alchemist may be ours. The true sunshine of life is in the heart. It is there that the smile is born that makes the light of life, the rosy smile that makes the world of beauty, and keeps life sweet—the smile that “makes a summer where darkness else would be.”