neither the radiance of a body nor the susceptibility of a mind gives origin to the sense of beauty. When by the action of a medium they are so brought together, then arises what before was not, an idea of beauty, an emotion of beauty, an exclamation "Beautiful," upon which follow trains of thought, feeling, and it may be action, graduated, as I said before, according to the mental and moral character of the percipient. The steps whereby is done the work of bringing object and subject into presence are always manifold, and often reach over tracts never yet measured. Those steps imply means of utterance on the part of the object, means of receiving what it utters on the part of the subject, and a vehicle of conveyance to carry the utterance over the inch or the practical infinity which may separate between the two. Could a star or a rose, a wave or a field of corn throw off nothing from them, and could a man not take in what they do throw off in any other way than he takes it in on the palm of his hand, they would never be known to him. Therefore the offices of an eye in him, and of a reflecting or emitting impulse in them, are called for. These given, a vehicle to carry the impulse from the surface of the star to the interior of the eye must be found. This being supplied, as we believe by ether, what Sirius emits and what the moon or the rose reflects is borne both to the hand and the eye, but to the hand it is as if it were not, while to the eye it brings tidings of a fair object without. Now the eye has not evolved either the ether or the star, not even the motion in ether which travelled from the star. No more has the star evolved the eye. All of them together have not evolved the mind which can say "Beautiful," can ask "Who made it"? can speculate on its distance, can determine to try and measure that distance, and can bring others to enjoy the sight. Yet all this synthesis is to be accounted for without any Mind planning and perfecting the whole, accounted for by a few phrases and a few trifling facts which to the phenomenon are not more than the emery dust is to the diamond.

In the passage quoted by Lord Grimthorpe from Mozley, it is said that no one could have anticipated that the same physical laws which feed us, clothe us, and give us breath and motion, would also create a picture. Of themselves the light, heat, water, air, do not create any picture. All the trees and flowers which glow in a beautiful sunset see no picture. The animals see a glory and a beauty, but the inward picture never leads to an attempt to reproduce itself. This is for the human mind only. Just as such inward picture of the sunset as man enjoys is born of the soul in union with Nature, so such external picture as he may paint to

perpetuate the memory of his delight, and to impart some portion of it to others, is born of that soul. When that external picture is on the canvas it is not philosophical to show how pigments are composed, how they coalesce with canvas, how given motions must result in given forms, the pigments being what they are, and then to dispense with Turner, as well as with his conception and performance of the whole. Just as surely as that picture on canvas came of man, who could make and manipulate canvas, so surely did the inward picture on mind which gave birth to it come from One who had made and could act upon mind.

The picture of light in the mind of Milton, and that of the starry sky in the mind of Kant, were as much real events in the history of our planet as our sunshiny showers or phosphorescence at sea. Those two inward pictures belonged to a world in which wood or stone have no part-to a world as much above the orbit of animals as the path of the eagle is above that of the waggoner. They not only left behind all power of animals to attain to them, but all human power to embody them in any painting. Words go further here than forms and colours, because they more directly admit mind to the views of mind, suggesting the beauties as they shone inwardly, not as they were built up outwardly. If to the two cases named we add Newton's contemplations of light, and then consider how much effect on human thought and feeling, consequently upon human pursuits and action, has been produced by the allurement to scientific research which the charm of light brought to bear on Newton, by the intellectual stimulus to lofty speculation it gave to Kant, by the sublime emotion wherewith it inspired Milton, we have some slight hint of the potency of beauty as a practical force in human affairs. We have also some idea of the grossness of that conception of it which sees in it only a matter of habit and fashion. The two supreme beauties known to earth, that of the light of day and the lights of night, with all of human delight and elevation to which they have given birth, flash exposure on the school which would reduce beauty to a thing of habit and fashion. It would not be more unscientific to say that light itself is a matter of tallow chandling.

In the commerce of mind with body, the place held by beauty, when bodies present themselves to mind through the eye, is analagous to that held by pleasures special to each of the other senses when they are the channels of communication. Taste brings us sweetness, touch the pleasures of genial warmth, and many others, smell those of perfumes, and hearing those of music, whether that of speech, of song, or of the woods. All these may be viewed as

beauty reaching us in various guises. But in beauty proper, that of forms and colours, there is a special feature. It serves no pressing physical need: Taste has its direct utility, it is our alimentary sense; so without touch we could not guide our motions, it is our mechanical sense; without smell we could not keep our homes or cities pure, it is our sanitary sense; without hearing we could not hold fellowship with our kindred minds, it is our social sense. In each of these, over and above the purpose of bare utility which possibly might have been served without any attached pleasure, there is a system of direct contribution to mental delight through physical channels; yet in all pleasure is manifestly enlisted in the service of utility; a beneficent end dignifying every arrangement. The beauty of flowers, of woods and fields, of flocks, herds, and birds, of hill and sea, of morn and eve, of noonday and of night, is not needed to make us feed, or to keep us right when we walk, or to warn us of fever in the pool, or to call us out into communion with our fellow men. That beauty is over and above the purposes of physical existence, of survival in that existence, a sheer surplus of delights, and of delights tending to lift us up above bodily wants into a region where things are prized for their own sake, where joy is known above mere animal satisfaction. And those delights allure our thoughts, our researches away to other worlds, and in so doing marvellously enlarge the range of our intellects, as well as guide the practical sciences and the course of commerce and manufacturing all this ministry of the senses to our happiness, both in direct enjoyments, and in resulting benefits involving, as it does, the co-ordinated action of more worlds than one, of forces, motions and agents incalculably numerous and complex, is no matter of habit or fashion alone, but is a system of conduits through which flows the goodness of a great Creator.

One remark more; from the beauties which mothers see in the faces of their babes, to those found in the gardens, the fields, or the skies, not one depends on this world alone. Independently of other worlds earth can make nothing beautiful. In a pitch dark night the child's eye has no expression, neither is the rose red nor the lily fair, nor yet on land or sea is there aught lovely to behold. All physical beauty depends directly on light from Heaven.

This is the cardinal fact in the matter, and for ever settles the question whether beauty is or is not a mere question of habit, and whether it is or is not automatic. In fact, when looked into, the term "automatic beauty" will be found absolutely unmeaning, contemplating, as it must do, beauty as something with a single base, and evolving itself from that base alone. That light which is our sole

fountain of beauty leads us by scientific consequence farther than habit and fashion: as far as the sun-farther than that, as far as the stars—farther than that, as far as the all-surrounding ether. But for ether to give light it must be moved. In any substance, motion is not a somewhat evolved in it, but a somewhat imparted to it. Motion, vibration in ether is the last physical fact to which we are conducted by light, the exclusive source of physical beauty. That fact compels us to think of a Mover and that Mover must be One whose touch can simultaneously thrill the substance encompassing all worlds, and pervading their inmost recesses.

ORDINARY MEETING, DECEMBER 5, 1887.

PROFESSOR G. §. STOKES, D.C.L., P.R.$., President,
IN THE CHAIR.

The Minutes of the last Meeting were read and confirmed, and the following Elections were announced :—

MEMBERS :-R. Armitage, Esq., Scarborough; W. H. Barlow, Esq., Bath; C. Bartholomew, Esq., C. E., Ealing; H. W. Bristow, Esq., F.R.S., F.G.S., Senior Director of the Geological Survey; Professor T. Carnelly, D.Sc., F.C.S., Dundee ; J. Corbet, Esq., M.P., Droitwich; E. H. Dering, Esq., D.L., Knowle; H. M. Simons, Esq., London; Rev. F. A. P. Barnard, D.C.L., LL.D., United States; Rev. Professor J. L. Bowman, A.M., S.T.D., United States; Rev. G. A. Jacob, D.D., Teignmouth; Mrs. Cheyne, London; Miss K. Moore, London.

LIFE ASSOCIATE:-W. Edwards, Esq., India.

ASSOCIATES :-Right Rev. Bishop of Bathurst, D.D., Bathurst ; E. Arrowsmith, Esq., Sydenham; R. Ashby, Esq., Staines; Col. the Hon. F. C. Bridgeman, M.P., London; Staff-Commander E. W. Creak, R.N., F.R.S., London; W. Debenham, Esq., London; W. G. Edwards, Esq., Bretagne ; T. C. Garfit, Esq., Lincolnshire; E. George, Esq., Kent; Lt.-Gen. J. G. Halliday, Kent; F. A. Kezer, Esq., United States; H. E. Kirby, Esq., F.C.S., London; Dr. J. W. Lowber, M.A., D.Sc., Ph.D., United States; Claude Leatham, Esq., Pontefract; Deputy Inspector General, H. F. Norbury, C.B., R.N., M.D., Plymouth; F. Nimr, Esq., Cairo; C. B. Warring, Esq., M.A., Ph.D., United States; Rev. G. Ackerman, United States; Rev. H. A. Buchtel, D.D., United States; Rev. W. Crook, D.D., Ireland; Rev. T. Fleming, M.A., Ph.D., United States; Rev. Preb. J. T. Fowler, M.A., Chelmsford; Rev. A. G. Gristock, Hereford; Rev. G. A. Humble, M.D., South America; Rev. D. Honeyman, D.C.L., F.R.S.E., F.S.Sc., Nova Scotia; Rev. R. C. Kirkpatrick, Kilburn; Rev. J. H. Lamb, M.A.,

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