MYTHOLIGISTS ~

One more text from the mythologists is to the same purpose,—Beauty rides on a lion.

Beauty rests on necessities. The line of beauty is the result of a perfect economy.

The cell of the bee is built at that angle which gives the most strength with the least wax; the bone or the quill of the bird gives the most alar strength, with the least weight. “It is the purgation of superfluities,” said Michel Angelo.

There is not a particle to spare in natural structures.

There is a compelling reason in the uses of the plant, for every novelty of color or form: and our art saves material, by more skillful arrangement, and reaches beauty by taking every superfluous ounce that can be spared from a wall, and keeping all its strength in the poetry of columns.

In rhetoric, this art of omission is a chief secret of power, and, in general, it is proof of a high culture, to say the greatest matters most simply.