In no province of work
or human endeavor is improvement made, is improvement possible, but by
the action of that noble faculty through which we are uplifted when
standing before a masterpiece of Raphael. This ceaseless seeking for a
better, this unresting impulse towards the perfect, has brought the
English race through a thousand years of gradual upward movement, from
the narrow heptarchy, with its rude simplicity of life, up to this
wide cultivated confederacy of states with its multiform opulence of
life; and will yet carry us to a condition as much superior to our
present as that is to the times of Alfred.
In the works of the Almighty this principle is so alive that they are
radiant with beauty; and the degree of the radiance of each is often
the measure of its usefulness. How beautiful is a field of
golden wheat--whereby our bodies live--and the more beautiful the
closer it stands and the fuller are its heads. The oak and the pine
owe their majestic beauty to that which is the index of their
usefulness, the solid magnitude of their trunks. The proportions which
give the horse his highest symmetry of form, give him his fleetness
and endurance and strength.
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