The Gothic cathedral, with its pointed arch, its mullioned window, tapering spire, and upward-running lines, indicating the hope and aspiration of the middle ages, with its cruciform shape, typical of the faith of the Christian, is more than the stone and mortar of which it is constructed. The truly educated man in art perceives the adaptation, polish, and perfection in literature; discovers the grace, the just proportions, the ideal form and typical idea in sculpture; views the expression, grouping, sentiment, coloring, and human passion in painting; enjoys the harmonies, movements, and ideas in music, that combination of effects that makes subtile and evasive metaphors; discovers the conventionalized forms and mute symbols, the "frozen music" of architecture; finds grandeur in the mountains, glory in the sunset, metaphors of thought in every form of nature; laughs with the morning breeze, finds strength in the giant oak, and sorrow in the drooping willow.
We need the ideal. Let us not permit the mortal body to lord it too much over the immortal spirit. The ideal man is the purpose of education and the aim of existence, or life is not worth living. All material prosperity is naught except as contributing to that end. Sympathetic spirits are calling for more enlightenment and enjoyment, and leisure for the laboring classes. They believe that men should be men as well as machines, and that, if they are educated ideally, the practical will take care of itself. If we retain our belief in the high possibilities of the human soul, we shall have faith in ideal education, and shall confidently offer every opportunity for the highest development possible of the child's power for knowledge, enjoyment, and action. And let his
