and young.
Home is the centre and seat of whatever is most useful to us; and yet to
think of home is to think of spring-time and flowers, of the songs of
birds and flowing waters, of the voices of children, of floating clouds
and sunsets that linger as though heaven were loath to bid adieu to
earth. The warmth, the color, and the light of their boyish days still
glow in the hearts and imagination of noble men, and redeem the busy
trafficking world of their daily life from utter vulgarity. What hues
has not God painted on the air, the water, the fruit, and the grain that
are the very substance and nutriment of our bodies? Beauty is nobly
useful. It illumines the mind, raises the imagination, and warms the
heart. It is not an added quality, but grows from the inner nature of
things; it is the thought of God working outward. Only from drunken eyes
can you with paint and tinsel hide inward deformity. The beauty of hills
and waves, of flowers and clouds, of children at play, of reapers at
work, of heroes in battle, of poets inspired, of saints rapt in
adoration,--rises from central depths of being, and is concealed from
frivolous minds. Even in the presence of death, the hallowing spirit of
beauty is felt. The full-ripe fruit that gently falls in the quiet air
of long summer days, the yellow sheaves glinting in the rays of
autumn's sun, the leaf which the kiss of the hoar frost has made
blood-red and loosened from the parent stem,--are images of death but
they suggest only calm and pleasant thoughts. The Bedouin, who, sitting
amid the ruins of Ephesus, thinks but of his goats and pigs, heedless of
Diana's temple, Alexander's glory, and the words of Saint Paul, is the
type of those who place the useful above the excellent and the fair; and
as men who in their boards of trade buy and sell cattle and corn, dream
not of green fields and of grain turning to gold in the sun of June, so
we all, in the business and worry of life, lose sight of beauty which
makes the heart glad and keeps it young.

The mind of man is the earthly home of beauty, and if any real thing
were fair as the tender thought of imaginative youth, heaven were not
far. All we love is but our thought of what only thought makes known and
makes beautiful, and for what we know love's thought may be the essence
of all things.

Fairer than waters where soft moonlight lies,
Than flowers that slumber on the breast of Spring,
Than leafy trees in June when