Beauty comes to man, bearing intimations of his high origin and also of his glorious destiny. Under the magic spell which beauty throws around him, he forgets for the time being his limitations, his fears, his doubts. He is lifted into a realm of universal freedom, where all difficulties disappear, where all conflicts are eliminated. The æsthetic nature is not at all seclusive and aristocratic. It receives the melody, and symmetry, and harmony which reason finds in the tones, and forms, and colors of the outside world, and turns over to it. These rich gifts are then shared with all other human powers and faculties. Hunger is served with food set in painted china. Around the table, where man satisfies his appetite, pictures are hung, and the beef market and the mill are built and arranged in accordance with the dictates of symmetry and taste. The college, where truth is taught, and the courthouse, where law is administered, are invested with all the beauty of the architect’s genius. Thus beauty, high, heaven-born, and refreshing, is drawn into all the relations, and thrown around all the institutions of life. It reduces friction, redresses littleness, and adds to life good cheer and depth. It smoothes the rough places, rounds the sharp corners, and hangs the bow of hope on the dark cloud of coming trial. The æsthetic sense, nurtured on beauty, keeps before the minds of men and nations a proper ideal of life. When the ideal held before the mind at one period of advancement is reached, the æsthetic sense has already lifted another and a nobler, as far ahead of the actual as the first. In presenting to the living spirit ideals always in advance of actual attainment, the æsthetic nature opens the unending path of progress. It is incorrect to suppose that the ideal is worked out only in painting, symphony, or cathedral. Its presence is manifest in the useful, as well as the fine arts. The ideal often gets itself translated into the heel of a shoe, into the crown of a hat, into the wheel of a wagon, into the fence around the field, and into the structure of the mower and the reaper. It curves in the arches of bridges, echoes in the sound of the hammer, and breaks over the hills in the whistle of the engine.