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186 which had a mind so to celebrate man's rest after the labour of the harvest! In those days England was called "merry" and foreigners who came to her shores reported as a national characteristic the happy looks of her people: even their faces showed adornment! And thus it is that beautiful use always clothes itself in beauty.

I have said that all art is useful. To many that may have seemed a very contentious statement. But how can one separate beauty from use if one holds that everything which delights us is useful? On that statement there is only one condition I would impose. The use in which we delight must not mean the misuse or the infliction of pain on others. In those periods of civilization to which I have referred (so magnificent in their powers of self-discovery and self-adornment), there were always dark and cruel habitations where the "art of living" was not applied. They were content that the beauty on which they prided themselves should be built up on the suffering, the oppression, or the corruption of others. In the lust of their eyes there was a blind spot, so that they cared little about the conditions imposed by their own too arrogant claim for happiness on the lives that were spent to serve them. And out of their blindness came at last the downfall of their power.

So it has always been, so it always must be. I believe that beauty, delight, ornament, are as near to the object of life as anything that