Your correspondent has informed you of the foretaste we had on Tuesday evening, of the entertainments in store for us during the Winter Season, under the auspices of the po Book' Clab." The opening lecture the Rev. J. R, Goddard. If we may judge of the whole series by the sample already received, we are to have a course of a high order.
The subject for the evening was The Morality of Beauty." The speaker developed his subject rapidly in the opening sentence in which he struck the key-note as follow "There are certain features of nature and character, certain productions of literature and art, which the world, by universal consent, has agreed to call beautiful. If we analyze this element which has held under it spell the imagination of every age, we shall discover that it is intensely moral." It is indeed but the elo expression of moral ideas." All material forms are but the bodiment of that order and harmony which governs the universe.
Beauty is essentially divine, and of all the possible types of beauty which exist in the divine mind, we can only be cognizant of those that are presented to us through the medium of visible forms, The speaker then dwelt at some length a the moral effects of Beauty as seen in Natare, Arty and, Literature," In Nab Beauty is perceived and appreciated by ie instinct of the soul, and through the ions of science. The same matheical formula which gathers the leaves of a plant about the stem, determines the arrangement of the planets about the sun. The crystal, as i¢ lies imprisoned in its rocky bed, ja'the very embodiment of beauty. The dream of Plate has been more than line of Beauty, called the entranced the mind and which has fascio: magician for 20 centuries, has been found by modern scholars to be the pathway of th stars; so that while Plate pored over h Problems, and sublimely guessed the great Bodies, with their sweeping' orbits, were inciples which they involved, the heavenly even then tracing this self-same diagram upon infinite space.
Beauty in Artwas also eloquently portrayed. Among other illus the speaker re. ferred to the wonderful influence of song to move and i. It sways th soul with a regal sceptre, and its influence précminently moral. Never was th of music more lly seen than who the strains of seillaise Hymn, the allied armies the grand assault along the height Sevastopol; and when the standard of victory, amid sheeted fire and flame, was planted in triumph on the brow of the Malakoff, The speaker lastly treated of the Beauty of Morality as seen in Literature, None bat a good mau can become a great or success: orator; and the same truth may be illus in other departments of Literature of Poetry or Prose, A vicious sentiment, though hidden under a mask of elegant words, can never constitute true Beauty. How would the world be shocked if a Longfellow or a Tennyson should become the author of an immoral poem. The spell with which they now hold the public would be broken. Their past efforts would be stripped of their charm and their power, But after all, it may be asked whether perfect Beauty ever has or ever can be reached. Tt has been said that even Nature is crippled and imperfect, never fully realized her beau ideal. Beh all speech there is an eloquence which does not come forth with the words; behind all music there is a tenderness that is not quite realized in expression behind all forms of art there lurks an idea which the human artist can never render.
And shall it always be s0? Shall man never reach the realization of his dream? Culture will work wonders in an indefinite future. Another Angelo may come, robed in light, to teach new lessons of art; another Mozart may arise, to startle the world with unheard of but above and beyond all, there is perfection that can only be attained in a world where all is beauty, and glory, and light.
The Chairman, Dr. E. C. Lord, closed the with a few appropriate remarke. A vote of thanks waa then proposed and carried by acclamation, after which the audience dispersed.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.