we also feel
warmed and kindled by it.

So what we get from a nightly contemplation of the stars is a sense
of happy companionship with Nature. The Heart of Nature as here
revealed is both dependable and kindly. Nature is our friend. And in
her certain friendship the balm of peace falls softly on us. Our hearts
blend tenderly with the Heart of Nature; and in their union we see
Beauty of the gentlest and most reassuring kind.

CHAPTER IX

HOME BEAUTY

The Artist in his quest for Natural Beauty will have pursued it in the
remotest and wildest parts of the Earth, where he can see Nature in
her primeval and most elemental simplicity. He will have seen her in
many and most varied aspects--the grandest, the wildest, and the
most luxuriant. And from these numerous and so different
manifestations of Nature he will have been enabled more fully to
understand her meaning and comprehend her soul. Moreover, this
contemplation of Nature will have evoked from within himself much
that he had never suspected he possessed, and thereby his own soul
also he will have learned to understand. And from this completer
comprehension of his own soul and hers will have emerged a fuller
community of heart between him and Nature. He will have come to
worship her with a still more ardent devotion, and through the
intensity of his love discovered richer and richer Beauty in her.

But even yet he has not seen Natural Beauty where it can be found
in its highest perfection. Only when there can be the most intimate
possible relationship between him and the natural object he is
contemplating can Beauty at its finest be seen. And this closest
correspondence of all between him and Nature will only be when he
is in the natural surroundings with which he has been familiar from
childhood, and which have affected him in his most impressionable
years.

The Artist will have seen Nature as she manifests herself in the
teeming life of a tropical forest and the most varied races of men; in
the highest mountains and the widest deserts; in the glory of sunsets
and the calm of stars. But it is in none of these that he will see
deepest into the true Heart of Nature and understand her best. It is
amid scenery which he has loved since boyhood, in the hearts of his
own countrymen in their own country, that he will see deepest into
Nature. And deepest of all will he see when from among his
countrywomen he has united himself to the one of his own
deliberate choi