Beauty, then, is something which, uplifting us, strengthens the soul, helps the spirit to rise above the deadening influence of the commonplace monotony of the Everyday. It may not necessarily be essential to our success in this world, though to surround oneself with Beauty is surely one of the ideals which spur us onward to the attainment of riches, but it is surely essential to our salvation! It is, as it were, the golden thread which runs through the plain homespun of life. Without it the pattern of our days would be distinctly “drab” on a buff ground. Everything that is physically fine; everything that is noble and just, generous and kind; everything which gladdens our hearts and sends us on our way rejoicing; everything which, as it were, lifts our faces up towards God in the high heavens—that surely is _Beautiful!_ I always like to think that Shelley in his essay on “Love” made Love synonymous with Beauty: “Thou demandest what is Love?” he wrote. “It is that powerful attraction towards all that we conceive of fear, or hope beyond ourselves, when we find within our own thoughts the chasm of an insufficient void, and seek to awaken in all things that are, a community with what we experience within ourselves. If we reason, we would be understood; if we imagine, we would that the airy children of our brain were born anew within another’s; if we feel, we would that another’s nerves should kindle at once and mix and melt into our own, that lips of motionless ice should not reply to lips quivering and burning with the heart’s best blood. This is Love. This is the bond and sanction which connects not only man with man, but with everything which exists.”