Amid a rural people, also, no class of citizens is more influential than the clergy, who go about as the shepherds of the right; and without doubt in Kentucky, as elsewhere, ministerial ideals have wrought their effects on taste in architecture. Perhaps it is well to state that this is said broadly, and particularly of the past. The Kentucky preachers during earlier times were a fiery, zealous, and austere set, proclaiming that this world was not a home, but wilderness of sin, and exhorting their people to live under the awful shadow of Eternity. Beauty in every material form was a peril, the seductive garment of the devil. Wellnigh all that made for æsthetic culture was put down, and, like frost on venturesome flowers, sermons fell on beauty in dress, entertainment, equipage, houses, church architecture, music, the drama, the opera--everything. The meek young spirit was led to the creek or pond, and perhaps the ice was broken for her baptism. If, as she sat in the pew, any vision of her chaste loveliness reached the pulpit, back came the warning that she would some day turn into a withered hag, and must inevitably be "eaten of worms." What wonder if the sense of beauty pined or went astray, and found itself completely avenged in the building of such churches? And yet there is nothing that even religion more surely demands than the fostering of the sense of beauty within us, and through this also we work towards the civilization of the future. IV Many rural homes have been built since the war, but the old type of country life has vanished. On the whole, there has been a strong movement of population towards the towns, rapidly augmenting their size. Elements of showiness and freshness have been added to their once unobtrusive architecture. And, in particular, that art movement and sudden quickening of the love of beauty which swept over this country a few years since has had its influence here. But for the most part the newer homes are like the newer homes in other American cities, and the style of interior appointment and decoration has few native characteristics. As a rule the people love the country life less than of yore, since an altered social system has deprived it of much leisure, and has added hardships. The Kentuckian does not regard it as part of his mission in life to feed fodder to stock; and servants are hard to get, the colored ladies and gentlemen having developed a taste for urban society.