CHAPTER XI.
ART.
"Give honour unto Luke Evangelist: For he it was (the aged legends say) Who first taught Art to fold her hands and pray.
Scarcely at once she dared to rend the mist Of devious symbols: but soon having wist How sky-breadth and field-silence and this day Are symbols also in some deeper way, She looked through these to God, and was God's priest.
"And if, past noon, her toil began to irk, And she sought talismans, and turned in vain To soulless self-reflections of man's skill, Yet now, in this the twilight, she might still Kneel in the latter grass to pray again, Ere the night cometh and she may not work." DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.
When we consider how much of the direction of life depends upon the quality of our taste, upon right discernment in what we like and dislike, it is evident that few things can be more important in education than to direct this directing force, and both to learn and teach the taste for what is best as far as possible in all things.

For in the matter of taste nothing is unimportant.

Taste influences us in every department of life, as our tastes are, so are we.

The whole quality of our inner and outer life takes its tone from the things in which we find pleasure, from our standard of taste.

If we are severe in our requirements, hard to please, and at least honest with ourselves, it will mean that a spur of continual dissatisfaction pricks us, in all we do, into habitual striving for an excellence which remains beyond our reach.