any given time. We have not anywhere a complete enumeration of these secondary laws. In the few remarks which we have to offer, we are to limit ourselves to the two which stand out most prominently.

First, Those objects are recalled most readily and frequently to which we have attended, or to which we have attached an act of the will of any description. How speedily, for example, does the striking of the hours of the clock vanish from our memory when there has been no particular circumstance to call our attention to it! On the other hand, when we have deliberately revolved any particular topic in our minds, it will more readily come up before us at all future times. The will has an antiseptic power, and keeps whatever has been embalmed by it from being destroyed.

Secondly, Our minds will often be directed towards an object when our feelings are interested in it. There is a locality, for example, which has been much before the minds of multitudes during the past year or two. Some of us had scarcely ever heard of it before; it possesses in itself no great interest; it consists of rocky and barren heights sweeping down to an indented shore. Yet how often have our thoughts been turned of late to that place! With what eagerness did fathers and mothers, sisters and children, lover and friend, look for tidings of beloved ones toiling and fighting on these cold and bristling eminences! There are thousands upon thousands who can never forget that spot, many to whose view it will rise up every day of their future lives, and some to whom it will henceforth appear every waking hour of their existence on earth-for there it was that a son, or brother, or husband was smitten, as amidst flying balls and bursting shells, he rushed to fight the enemies of his country. There are children, whose first lessons in

geography, learned from a mother's lips, will be about these wild heights, and the blasting storms which raged around them-for there it was that the father breathed his last. And why do men's minds wander so often to these scenes? it is because their feelings have become interested in them, and emotion has the power of preserving, as in amber, whatever has been imbedded in it.

Now, let us mark how these two laws aid sciencific men in their pursuits. The attention which they have given to the subjects which engross them; their fixed determinations regarding them; the efforts which they have made to master the difficulties; their very disappointments and failures-all these tend to bring the objects more constantly before them, that they may fully exhibit themselves, and reveal all their truth. Then, their original tastes, and their acquired habits, the result of association, cause them to warm as they advance, and now their hearts are as much interested as their heads in their pursuits. The botanist comes to love the plants, the zoologist the animals, and the astronomer the stars, which he has often and anxiously watched, and scientific men generally feel, when engaged with their favourite pursuits, as if they were surrounded by friends and companions. But as, when we truly love our friends, we find ourselves frequently thinking of them, so, those who are engaged in the study of nature dwell habitually among their cherished objects, and the images of them start up everywhere to delight and instruct, to furnish new examples of old laws, and suggest new laws not previously discovered.

SECT. IV. THE ESTHETIC SENTIMENTS.

It may be safely affirmed that no one has been able to give a complete account of the nature of Beauty. Pleasant are the glimpses which not a few have had, but to no one has she fully revealed her charms. We have many valuable contributions towards a correct theory, but we are yet without a thorough analysis or a full exposition. We are to attempt no systematic discussion of a subject so interesting from the nature of the objects at which it looks, and yet shewing itself to be so subtle and retiring when we would advance towards it. It is very obvious that, in the judicious treatment of the subject, there should be a distinction drawn between the object which calls forth the feeling and the feeling called forth. We are to content ourselves with shewing that there is a correspondence between the two, and the component parts of each. Here, as in every other province of God's works, we find the confluence of a number of streams; only, in the case of beauty, they are so blended that it is impossible to trace each to its source.

I. Vigorous efforts are being made, in the present day, to find out in what physical beauty consists. These attempts have so far been successful. It has been demonstrated that there are certain distributions of colours which are more agreeable than others. Certain colours, if placed alongside of each other in the decoration of a house, or a piece of dress, are felt to produce a pleasant impression. But we have shewn that these juxtapositions of colours are frequently met with in the plant, in the plumage of birds, and in the sky. There is here a correspondence between the external world on the one hand, and our organization bodily, and probably mental also, on the other.

Endeavours are also being made to find out the law of harmonious forms. Not having fully examined the subject, we are not prepared to say how far they have been successful. But we are persuaded that such inquirers as Dr. M'Vicar and Mr. Hay are on the proper route, and that, sooner or later, there will be detected certain laws of beauty in form, capable of mathematical expression. But it is to be carefully noticed, that even when scientific research shall have established all this, it has not fully explained the phenomena of beauty. For the mental sentiment, of which we are conscious, corresponding to the physical object which excites it, is as wonderful as the object which calls it forth; indeed, the most remarkable feature of the whole phenomenon is the adaptation of the one to the other.

II. We are not to speak confidently on so intricate a subject, but it appears to us that there is a feeling of beauty resulting from certain exercises of the intelligence, (we are sure that there is a feeling of beauty awakened by certain moral ideas.) This emotion issues when the mind, in contemplating objects, discovers spontaneously, without will and without effort, a number of seemingly intended relations of one thing to another. There has been a striving after the expression of this truth by deep thinkers in different ages. According to Augustine, beauty consists in order and design; according to Hutcheson, in unity with variety; according to Diderot, in relations. Glimpses of the same doctrine appear and disappear in the writings of Cousin, M'Vicar, and Ruskin. There is a sort of beauty in a large combination of independent means to accomplish one end, and in the co-agency of numberless causes to work one effect,

Cousin on the True, the Beautiful, the Good; M'Vicar on the Beautiful, &c., (1887;) Ruskin's Modern Painters, vol. ii. seot. i. chaps. v. v.

provided always that the end be not malevolent, or the effect trivial. There is a beauty in certain well-arranged forms, perhaps also in certain recurrences and proportions. It is said that there is a beauty in certain regular rectilinear figures, such as the triangle, the parallelogram and square, and it has been shown that these regulate not a few forms of beauty. This seems to us, however, to be only a partial expression of the truth; we think that it needs a complementary truth to be added. The feeling of beauty is called forth only when, along with an observable regularity of figure, there is something to indicate that there has been more than mechanism at work. If the form be too evidently regular, there is little or no emotion excited. On the other hand, if the figure be irregular throughout, there is no feeling of beauty. But if there be a regular figure, such as a triangle, at the basis of the whole, with curvilinear departures to set it off, or if there be rhomboids set in spirals, as on the surface of cones, then the æsthetic sentiment is called forth.

This general view is illustrated and confirmed by the pleasure which is felt in rhyme and in verse of every description, indeed, in all forms of poetry, ancient or modern, eastern or western. All kinds of poetry agree in presenting repetitions, parallelisms, balancings, correspondences of some description. The mind is excited, and its admiration is called forth, when it finds the varied thoughts and feelings grouped under correlations of sound or sentiment, which exercise the intellect, and aid the natural flow of association, which proceeds, we have shewn, according to correlation. There is a similar pleasure excited by the tropes, figures, apposite allusions, comparisons, metaphors. contrasts, which are ever addressing themselves to us in more adorned prose, such as that of Plato, of Jeremy Taylor, and of Edmund Burke.