the hand of the Divine Master; but led by Him-fulfilling its legitimate purpose in the development of man --giving its true reverence to God and not another— pandering to no lust or sensual passion-Art shall never perish, until its landscape be forgotten when we walk the fields of Paradise, its architecture when we reach the city that hath foundations, and when instead of painting heroes or saints we shall look upon the face of Him-their Master and ours. I. CERES. I HAVE no hesitation as to the use of the word "blessing." It is the right word, only it must be taken in its simple meaning, "to praise, to glorify for benefits received; to praise, to magnify, to extol for excellences; to esteem blessed or count happy.” As to the cornfields, I take them as a symbol of the splendour of the natural creation. I might, indeed, have said the forests-but they seem to stand apart from us, they are not so interwoven with our life. I might have said the rivers-but they are glorious rather by virtue of the land that hems them in. Who cares to sail slowly down the Rhine from Düsseldorf to Leyden ?—and yet the waters are the same that whirled past the Loreley, or raced with the Moselle—two rivers in one channel, yet not mixing their waters. I might have said the ocean-but the majesty of the sea is sometimes that of terror, and another word is on our lips, not blessing, unless we have eyes to see Him there beneath whose footsteps the waves are still; and so we turn from the sea to the cornfields, whose waves are life, not death. And such waves! In Russia you may ride a hundred miles and see nothing but the yellow corn like a sea of gold, and hear nothing but the rustling of the slender stems. So infinite in change; there is the fresh upturned earth, the pale green blade, the silver whiteness of the ear, changing by the alchemy of heaven to the deep, deep gold. So wrought into our lives; so dear in its associations; its seed-time and harvest; the patient cattle bending to the yoke; Ruth gleaning; even the Master Himself who went through the cornfields one Sabbath eighteen hundred years ago, and His disciples plucked the ears of corn and did eat, rubbing them in their hands. Remembering these things, the cornfields have become to me the type of landscape beauty, and, placing the two words together, my subject stands declared: "Blessing the Cornfields," blessing the infinite glory of the world around us, magnifying it, glorifying it for its great beauty, witnessing to the splendour of the natural creation. For the poet and the painter are witnesses; it is not their mission to create-they see and bear record. The poet does this, and by virtue of the flexibility of speech he can express it with a range almost infinite. The |