Every rock has its own radiancies of color, texture, weight, and density. One of John Ruskin's most useful and beautiful books is his _Ethics of the Dust_, and those who have not read it should do so to understand how many things a wise and good man has felt radiated from the rocks. Shakspere felt the potency of this truth or he would never have written that he saw "tongues in trees; books in the running brooks; sermons in stones, and good in everything." Every landscape radiates its own personality. Some are quietly pastoral, as the valleys in Connecticut. The prairies of Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska are wide and impressive; the wastes of the Colorado Desert are vast and appalling; the varied colorings of the Painted Desert are weird and startling. The orange, lemon, and other orchards of Southern California delight the senses, the forests of the north and the High Sierras stir the soul by their expansiveness, and the groves of Big Trees overpower by their height and size. The ocean is restless and resistless; the stars pitiless at times, soothing at others. Each scene, whether pastoral, picturesque, wild, rugged, grand, or weird, has its peculiar radiancies, and some scenes possess many qualities, all of which are felt or perceived by the sensitive onlooker. For instance, as one stands on the rim of the Grand Canyon he feels the radiancies of overwhelming vastness, profound depth, far-reaching length, expansive width, vivid and extraordinary coloring, bizarre and strange carvings, and, in the lower depths of the Inner Gorge, where flows the solemn and sullen Colorado, a strangeness and mystery found nowhere else in the known world. In his _Kreutzer Sonata_, Tolstoi contends that certain music radiates damning influences, and though I do not agree with him (perhaps because I have never felt or seen such evil), his attitude of mind serves as a further illustration of my proposition. We all are aware of certain radiancies of certain kinds of music, even though unaccompanied with words. The _Dead March in Saul_; the _Threnody_ in Bach's Passion Music; the _Death of the King_ in Grieg's _Peer Gynt_, and Chopin's _Funeral March_, all radiate the solemnity and sadness of death, while Sousa's various marches, Chopin's _March Militaire_, and a hundred other similar compositions radiate the arousement either of active life or passionate war. The _Glorias_ of Mozart and Pergolesi, and Handel's _Hallelujah Chorus_ speak--even though the words are unheard--of the joy of the world at the Savior's birth, and the _Requiems_ of Verdi, Bach, and Gounod of the sadness of soul felt at His cruel death. Every picture radiates the spirit of its artist at the period of creation, and every piece of music the influences that overpower the soul of the composer; and even every piece of furniture radiates to some extent the spirit of the age in which it was created, or the animating spirit of its creator.