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over the heart. Not merely work, or good work, but superior, expressive, emotional work is its aim. The esthetical feelings cause us to delight in such labor, and to go, as far as may be, to every undertaking crowned with garlands.

If we pass to the beauties of nature, equally do we find that it is thought, aptness of arrangement, skill of workmanship, labor performed with infinite love and faithfulness, that arrest the mind and gratify the heart. In proportion as many adaptations, many powers are gathered into a brief compass, and with a perfect finish and relation of parts united in one organic whole, are we climbing with slow gradations, with a thousand steps of varied progress, from the lowest life to the highest, from the plant to man, delighted with the goodness of the .thought, the kind and abundant ministration of faculties to the well-being and excellence of the final product. In each advance of beauty, there is more expression, because there is more and more perfection, more and more beneficent labor, till, in man we find the highest condensation of power and regard; service, compactness, symmetry, finish, in their most perfect forms.

Everywhere, then, it is the labor of mind and heart, the births of thought and feeling, the rational products of high intelligence and love, that arouse the sensibility of beauty; and we are so constituted that we can not be indifferent to these qualities when perceived by us. A cold, intellectual apprehension does not exhaust them. They elicit a certain regard, assume a certain relation which we designate as beauty, and so call forth the pleasures of beauty. Such enjoyment on our part is (1) a crowning sympathy with excellence; such perception (2) an additional incentive to high attainment. They are the thirst of an aspiring spirit for that which is beyond, which is above; for that which it