the
outward and the inward pervades the universe."

The power of the outward reaches the inward chiefly through the eye
and the ear. Colour, as Ruskin taught us, is not only delightful,
but sacred. "Of all God's gifts to the sight of man, colour is
the holiest, the most divine, the most solemn.... Consider what
sort of a world it would be if all flowers were grey, all leaves
black, and the sky _brown_." The perfection of form--the grace of
outline, the harmony of flowing curves--appeals, perhaps, less
generally than colour, because to appreciate it the eye requires
some training, whereas to love colour one only needs feeling. Yet
form has its own use and message, and so, again, has the solemnity of
ordered movement; and when all these three elements of charm--colour
and form and motion--are combined in a public ceremony, the effect
is irresistible.

But the appeal of the inward reaches us not solely through the
eye. The ear has an even higher function. Perhaps the composer of
great music speaks, in the course of the ages, to a larger number of
human hearts than are touched by any other form of genius. Thousands,
listening enraptured to his strain, hear "the outpourings of eternal
harmony in the medium of created sound." And yet again there are
those, and they are not a few, to whom even music never speaks
so convincingly as when it is wedded to suitable words; for then
two emotions are combined in one appeal, and human speech helps
to interpret the unspoken.

It is one of the deplorable effects of war that it so cruelly diminishes
the beauty of our public and communal life. Khaki instead of scarlet,
potatoes where geraniums should be, common and cheap and ugly things
usurping the places aforetime assigned to beauty and splendour--these
are our daily and hourly reminders of the "great tribulation" through
which the nation is passing. Of course, one ought not to wish it
otherwise. Not, indeed, "sweet," but eminently salutary, are these
"uses of adversity," for they prevent us from forgetting, even if
we were inclined to such base obliviousness, the grim realities
of the strife in which we are engaged. And yet, and in spite of
all this, beauty retains its sway over "the common heart of man."
Even war cannot destroy, though it may temporarily obscure, the
beauty of Nature; and the beauty of Art is only waiting for the
opportunity of Peace to reassert itself.

To the prevailing uncomeliness of this war-stricken time a