To this it seems a sufficient answer to say that the relation of any one external thing to any one mind which produces the peculiar condition which we call the perception of beauty, is _a_ fact, and, like every other single fact, must have an adequate cause. But when we find that there are forms of beauty, such as the beauty of sunlight, which operate alike on all men, and, it would seem, on all sensitive beings--when we find that the brilliant flowers which attract the child in the field or the lady in the drawing-room, attract the insect tribes--we feel ourselves in the presence of a great body of persistent relations, which it is impossible to pass over as unreal or as unimportant. But, again, there is ugliness in the world; and one ugly thing, it is suggested, destroys all your deductions from beauty. This, no doubt, is a very important fact for any one to grapple with who proposes to give any theoretical explanation of the presence of beauty in the universe; but for me, who am only inquiring whether and how far beauty is useful, it is not really material, because there can be no doubt that beauty, as well as ugliness, exists in the world. This much I will say in passing, that, to my mind, the balance of things is in favour of beauty and against ugliness--the tendency is in favour of beauty, not ugliness, and that tendency may be a very important thing to think of. Furthermore, the fact that we recognize ugliness seems to make our recognition of beauty more important; for it shows that the perception of beauty is not mere habit, and that we have an inward and independent judgment on the matter--we are able to approve the one thing on the score of beauty, and to reject the other as ugly. Even allowing fully for the existence of ugliness, it must be conceded that the world around us presents a vast mass of beauty--complex, diverse, commingled, and not easily admitting of analysis. It is common alike to the organic and the inorganic realms of Nature. The pageants of the sky at morning, noon, and night, the forms of the trees, the beauty of the flowers, the glory of the hills, the awful sublimity of the stars--these, and a thousand things in Nature, fill the soul with a sense of beauty, which the art neither of the poet, nor of the philosopher, nor of the painter can come near to depict. We are moved and overcome, sometimes by this object of beauty, sometimes by that, but yet more by the complex mass of glory of the universe. "For Nature beats in perfect tune, And rounds with rhyme her every rune; Whether she work on land or sea, Or hide underground her alchemy. Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, Or dip thy paddle in the lake, But it carves the bow of beauty there, And ripples in rhyme the oar forsake."