1863 319 Their forefathers in mediaeval England and France possessed a passionate love of the beautiful. How is it that the sense is extinct in their descendants ? There is a Yorkshire proverb : " What t'Almighty's left aght, there's nobody can put in." But has He left out this exquisite faculty ? I doubt it greatly ; merely it has not been allowed to grow. It does indeed seem hopeless to inspire vulgar souls with the breath of life, the desire for the comely. But it is at present a missing faculty, or else one that is unregulated. It has been well said that every man who is not a nonentity leaves his trace behind him. Look at Ely lantern and choir, and who can fail to think of Alan de Walsingham. Look at Winchester College, and at once up leaps the memory of William of Wyke-ham ; look at S. Paul's, London and forget Sir Christopher Wren if you can. But putting aside the great men, how many an one who is humble and little known has left his trace behind him— I am speaking of artistic and structural traces only. I had a young blacksmith who shod horses and did little more, nothing artistic. I took him about the country to show him old fine hammered ironwork, and then I drew a design for my principal gates, and bade him execute it. He was fired with artistic zeal; and now, a middle-aged man, he does no other ironwork but what is ornamental and artistic ; and for three hundred years hence William Roberts', gates will recall him. There are, however, tens of thousands of men who simply vegetate, do no good, do no harm, and who, when they die, leave no more trace behind them whereby they may be remembered and regretted than does a cabbage stump, when plucked up and thrown over the hedge. A man's house should have character as well as he has himself. And, without individuality in a dwelling as in the indweller, there can be no command of love. The usual London house, the suburban villa, the red brick cottage in a row has no more individuality than has a cab or an omnibus. You can engage and occupy either, but love neither. How indefatigable our great-grandmothers and their ancestresses were in preparing the traces that they desired to leave behind them, in needlework, in embroidery, in tapestry, in books of receipts. In what way do our ladies of to-day draw their
