We may hope that what they have learned of European history
will enable them to travel with understanding and appreciation, that
places with a history will mean something to them, and that the great
impression of a living past may set a deep mark upon them with its
discipline of proportion that makes them personally so small and yet so
great, small in proportion to all that has been, great in their
inheritance from the whole past and in expectation of all that is yet to
be.
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.
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