Very brief and fitful that first art epoch when Phidias polished statues, the very fragments of which are the despair of modern sculptors. All too short also that era when Raphael and Botticelli brought the canvas into what seemed the zenith of its perfection. It was as if the vestal virgin of beauty had drawn near to fan the flickering light into a fierce flame only to allow it quickly to die out again. But if other art epochs have been soon followed by eras of ugliness and tyranny, it was because formerly the patrician class alone was interested in the beautiful. In that far-off time, Pericles had his palace and Athens her temple, but the common people dwelt in mud huts, wore coats of sheepskin, and slept on beds of straw. The beauty that was manifest in pictures, marbles, rich textures, bronzes, belonged exclusively to the cathedral or the palace. Now has come an era when art is diffused. Beauty is sprinkled all over the instruments of dining-room, parlor and library. It is organized into textures of cotton, wool and silk. Even in the poor man's cottage blossoms break forth upon floor and walls, while vines festoon the humblest door. Once, at great expense, a baron in France or Germany would send an artist into Italy to copy some masterpiece of Titian or Tintoretto. Now modern photography makes it possible for the poorest laborer to look upon the semblance of great pictures, statues, cathedrals, landscapes--treasures these once beyond the wealth of princes. Having made tools, books, travel, home, religion to be life-teachers, God has now ordained the beautiful as an apostle of the higher Christian life.