Broadway, in New York, and of the lake front, in Chicago. A carnival
of contending vulgarities, showing no artistry other than the most
puerile, these displays nevertheless yield an effect of amazing
beauty. This is on account of an occult property inherent in the
nature of light--_it cannot be vulgarized_. If the manipulation of
light were delivered into the hands of the artist, and dedicated
to noble ends, it is impossible to overestimate the augmentation of
beauty that would ensue.

For light is a far more potent medium than sound. The sphere of sound
is the earth-sphere; the little limits of our atmosphere mark the
uttermost boundaries to which sound, even the most strident can
possibly prevail. But the medium of light is the ether, which links
us with the most distant stars. May not this serve as a symbol of the
potency of light to usher the human spirit into realms of being at the
doors of which music itself shall beat in vain? Or if we compare the
universe accessible to sight with that accessible to sound--the
plight of the blind in contrast to that of the deaf--there is the same
discrepancy; the field of the eye is immensely richer, more various
and more interesting than that of the ear.

The difficulty appears to consist in the inferior impressionability
of the eye to its particular order of beauty. To the average man
color--as color--has nothing significant to say: to him grass is
green, snow is white, the sky blue; and to have his attention drawn to
the fact that sometimes grass is yellow, snow blue, and the sky green,
is disconcerting rather than illuminating. It is only when his retina
is assaulted by some splendid sunset or sky-encircling rainbow that
he is able to disassociate the idea of color from that of form and
substance. Even the artist is at a disadvantage in this respect, when