be decent, lofty, and elated; of Minerva, masculine, confident, and chaste; and of Venus, winning, soft, and conscious of pleasing. These sister arts, painting and statuary, as well as poetry, put it out of all doubt, that the imagination carries the ideas of the beautiful and the sublime far beyond visible nature; since no mortal ever possessed the blaze of divine charms that surrounds the Apollo Belvedere, or the Venus of Medici, I have just mentioned. A variety and flush of colouring is generally the refuge of painters, who are not able to animate their designs. We may call a lustre of colouring, the rant and fustian of painting, under which are hid the want of strength and nature. None but a painter of real genius can be severe and modest in his colouring, and please at the same time. It must be observed, that the glow and variety of colours give a pleasure of a very different kind from the object of painting. When foreign ornaments, gilding, and carving, come to be consider ed as necessary to the beauty of pictures, they are a plain diagnostic of a decay in taste and power.

$218. On Architecture.

Usher.

A free and easy proportion, united with simplicity, seem to constitute the elegance of form in building. A subordination of parts to one evident design forms simplicity; when the members thus evidently related are great, the union is always very great. In the proportions of a noble edifice, you see the image of a creating mind result from the whole. The evident uniformity of the rotunda, and its unparalleled simplicity, are probably the sources of its superior beauty. When we look up at a vaulted roof, that seems to rest upon our horizon, we are astonished at the magnificence, more than at the visible extent.

When I am taking a review of the objects of beauty and grandeur, can I pass by unnoticed the source of colours and visible beauty? When the light is withdrawn all nature retires from view, visible bodies are annihilated, and the soul mourns the universal absence in solitude; when it returns, it brings along with it the creation, and restores joy as well as beauty.

Ibid.

$219. Thoughts on Colours and Lights. If I should distinguish the perceptions of the senses from each other, according to

the strength of the traces left on the imagination, I should call those of hearing, feeling, smelling, and tasting,notions, which impress the memory but weakly; while those of colours I should call ideas, to denote their strength and peculiar clearness upon the imagination. This distinction deserves particular notice. The Author of nature has drawn an impenetrable veil over the fixed material world that surrounds us; solid matter refuses our acquaintance, and will be known to us only by resisting the touch; but how obscure are the informations of feeling! Light comes like an intimate acquaintance to relieve us: it introduces all nature to us, the fields, the trees, the flowers, the crystal streams, and azure sky. But all this beauteous diversity is no more than an agreeable enchantment formed by the light that spreads itself to view; the fixed parts of nature are eternally entombed beneath the light, and we see nothing in fact but a creation of colours. Schoolmen, with their usual arrogance, will tell you their ideas are transcripts of nature, and assure you that the veracity of God requires they should be so, because we cannot well avoid thinking so: but nothing is an object of vision but light; the picture we see is not annexed to the earth, but comes with angelic celerity to meet our eyes. That which is called body or substance, that reflects the various colours of the light, and lies hid beneath the appear ance, is wrapt in impenetrable obscurity; it is faithfully shut out from our eyes and imagination, and only causes in us the ideas of feeling, tasting, or smelling, which yet are not resemblances of any part of matter. I do not know if I appear too strong when I call colours the expression of the Divinity. Light strikes with such vivacity and force, that we can hardly call it inanimate or unintelligent.

$220. On Uniformity.

Ibid.

Shall we admit uniformity into our list of beauty, or first examine its real merits? When we look into the works of nature, we cannot avoid observing that uniformity is but the beauty of minute objects. The opposite sides of a leaf divided in the middle, and the leaves of the same species of vegetables, retain a striking uniformity: but the branch, the tree, and forest, desert this familiarity, and take a noble irregularity with vast advantage. Cut a tree into a regular form, and you change its

lofty port for a minute prettiness. What forms the beauty of country scenes, but the want of uniformity? No two hills, vales, rivers, or prospects, are alike; and you are charmed by the variety. Let us now suppose a country made up of the most beautiful hills and descents imaginable, but every hill and every vale alike, and at an equal distance; they soon tire you, and you find the delight vanishes with the novelty.

There are, I own, certain assemblages that form a powerful beauty by their union, of which a fine face is incontestable evidence. But the charm does not seem by any means to reside in the uniformity, which in the human countenance is not very exact. The human countenance may be planned out much more regularly, but I fancy without adding to the beauty, for which we must seek another source. In truth, the finest eye in the world without meaning, and the finest mouth without a smile are insipid. An agreeable countenance includes in the idea thereof an agreeable and gentle disposition. How the countenance, and an arrangement of colours and features, can express the idea of an unseen mind, we know not; but so the fact is, and to this fine intelligent picture, whether it be false or true, certain I am, that the beauty of the human countenace is owing, more than to uniformity. Shall we then say, that the greatest uniformity, along with the greatest variety, forms beauty? But this is a repetition of words without distinct ideas, and explicates a well-known effect by an obscure cause. Uniformity, as far as it extends, excludes variety; and variety, as far as it reaches, excludes uniformity. Variety is by far more pleasing than uniformity, but it does not constitute beauty; for it is impossible that can be called beauty, which, when well known, ceases to please: whereas a fine piece of music shall charm after being heard a hundred times; and a lovely countenance makes a stronger impression on the mind by being often seen, because their beauty is real. I think upon the whole, conclude, that if uniformity be a beauty, it is but the beauty of minute objects; and that it pleases only by the visible design, and the evident footsteps of intelligence it discovers.

we may,

Usher.

221. On Novelty. I must say something of the evanescent charms of novelty. When our curiosity is ex cited at the opening of new scenes, our

ideas are affecting and beyond life, and we see objects in a brighter hue than they after appear in. For when curiosity is sated, the objects grow dull, and our ideas fall to their diminutive natural size. What I have said may account for the raptured prospect of our youth we see backward; novelty always recommends, because expectations of the unknown are ever high; and in youth we have an eternal novelty; unexperienced credulous youth gilds our young ideas, and ever meets a fresh lustre that is not yet allayed by doubts. In age, experience corrects our hopes, and the imagination cools; for this reason, wisdom and high pleasure do not reside together.

I have observed through this discourse, that the delight we receive from the visible objects of nature, or from the fine arts, may be divided into the conceptions of the sublime, and conceptions of the beautiful. Of the origin of the sublime I spoke hypothetically, and with diffidence; all we certainly know on this head is, that the sensations of the sublime we receive from external objects, are attended with obsc ure ideas of power and immensity; the origin of our sensations of beauty are still more unintelligible; however, I think there is some foundation for classing the objects of beauty under different heads, by a correspondence or similarity, that may be ob served between several particulars. Ibid. § 222 On the Origin of our general Ideas of Beauty.

A full and consistent evidence of design, especially if the design be attended with an important effect, gives the idea of beauty; thus a ship under sail, a greyhound, a wellshaped horse, are beautiful, because they display with ease a great design. Birds and beasts of prey, completely armed for de struction, are for the same reason beautiful, although objects of terror.

Where different designs at a single view, appear to concur to one effect, the beauty accumulates; as in the Grecian architecture: where different designs, leading to different effects, unite in the same whole, they cause confusion, and diminish the idea of beauty, as in the Gothic buildings. Upon the same principle, confusion and disorder are ugly or frightful; the figures. made by spilled liquors are always ugly, Regular figures are handsome; and the circular, the most regular, is the most beautiful. This regulation holds only where the sublime does not enter; for in

that case the irregularity and carelessness add to the ideas of power, and raise in proportion our admiration. The confusion in which we see the stars scattered over the heavens, and the rude arrangement of mountains, add to their grandeur.

A mixture of the sublime aids exceed ingly the idea of beauty, and heightens the horrors of disorder and ugliness. Personal beauty is vastly raised by a noble air; on the contrary, the dissolution and ruins of a large city, distress the mind proportionally: but while we mourn over great ruins, at the destruction of our species, we are also soothed by the generous commiseration we feel in our own breast, and therefore ruins give us the same kind of grateful melancholy we feel at a tragedy. Of all the objects of discord and confusion, no other is so shocking as the human soul in madness. When we see the principle of thought and beauty disordered, the horror is too high, like that of a massacre committed before our eyes, to suffer the mind to make any reflex act on the god-like traces of pity that distinguish our species: and we feel no sensations but those of dismay and terror.

Regular motion and life shewn in inanimate objects, give us also the secret pleasure we call beauty. Thus waves spent, and successively breaking upon the shore, and waving fields of corn and grass in continued motion, are ever beautiful. The beauty of colours may perhaps be arranged under this head; colours, like notes of music, affect the passions; red incites anger, black to melancholy; white brings a gentle joy to the mind; the softer colours refresh or relax it. The mixtures and gradations of colours have an effect correspondent to the transitions and combinations of sounds; but the strokes are too transient and feeble to become the objects of expression.

Beauty also results from every disposition of nature that plainly discovers her favour and indulgence to us. Thus the spring season, when the weather becomes mild, the verdant fields, trees loaded with fruit or covered with shade, clear springs, but particularly the human face, where the gentle passions are delineated, are beyond expression beautiful. On the same principle, inclement wintry skies, trees stripped of their verdure, desert barren lands, and, above all, death, are frightful and shocking. I must, however, observe, that I do not by any means suppose that the

sentiment of beauty arises from a reflex considerate act of the mind, upon the observation of the designs of nature or of art: the sentiment of beauty is instantaneous, and depends upon no prior reflections. All I mean is, that design and beauty are in an arbitrary manner united together; so that where we see the one, whether we reflect on it or no, we perceive the other. I must further add, that there may be other divisions of beauty easily discoverable, which I have not taken notice of.

The general sense of beauty, as well as of grandeur, seems peculiar to man in the creation. The herd in common with him enjoy the gentle breath of spring; they lie down to repose on the flowery bank, and hear the peaceful humming of the bee; they enjoy the green fields and pastures: but we have reason to think, that it is man only who sees the image of beauty over the happy prospect, and rejoices at it; that it is hid from the brute creation, and depends not upon sense, but on the intelligent mind.

We have just taken a transient view of the principal departments of taste; let us now, madam, make a few general reflections upon our subject. Usher.

§ 223. Sense, Taste, and Genius, distinguished.

The human genius, with the best assistance, and the finest examples, breaks forth but slowly; and the greatest men have but gradually acquired a just taste, and chaste simple conceptions of beauty. At an immature age, the sense of beauty is weak and confused, and requires an excess of colouring to catch its attention. It then prefers extravagance and rant to justness, a gross false wit to the engaging light of nature, and the shewy, rich, and glaring, to the fine and amiable. This is the childhood of taste; but as the human genius strengthens and grows to maturity, if it be assisted by a happy education, the sense of universal beauty awakes; it begins to be disgusted with the false and misshapen deceptions that pleased before, and rests with delight on elegant simplicity, on pictures of easy beauty and unaffected grandeur.

The progress of the fine arts in the human mind may be fixed at three remarkable degrees, from their foundation to the loftiest height. The basis is a sense of beauty and of the sublime, the second step we may call taste, and the last genius.

A sense of the beautiful and of the great

is universal, which appears from the uniformity thereof in the most distant ages and nations. What was engaging and sublime in ancient Greece and Rome, are so at this day: and, as I observed before, there is not the least necessity of improvement or science, to discover the charms of a graceful or noble deportment. There is a fine but an ineffectual light in the breast of man. After nightfall we have After nightfall we have admired the planet Venus; the beauty and vivacity of her lustre, the immense distance from which we judged her beams issued, and the silence of the night, all concurred to strike us with an agreeable amazement. But she shone in distinguished beauty, without giving sufficient light to direct our steps, or shew us the objects around us. Thus in unimproved nature, the light of the mind is bright and useless. In utter barbarity, our prospect of it is still less fixed; it appears, and then again seems wholly to vanish in the savage breast, like the same planet Venus, when she has but just raised her orient beams to mariners above the waves, and is now descried, and now lost, through the swelling billows.

The next step is taste, the subject of our inquiry, which consists in a distinct, unconfused knowledge of the great and beautiful. Although you see not many possessed of a good taste, yet the generality of mankind are capable of it. The very populace of Athens had acquired a good taste by habit and fine example, so that a delicacy of judgment seemed natural to all who breathed the air of that elegant city: we find a manly and elevated sense distinguish the common people of Rome and of all the cities of Greece, while the level of mankind was preserved in those cities; while the plebeians had a share in the government, and an utter separation was not made between them and the nobles, by wealth and luxury. But when once the common people are rent asunder wholly from the great and opulent, and made subservient to the luxury of the latter; then the taste of nature infallibly takes her flight from both parties. The poor by a sordid habit, and an attention wholly confined to mean views, and the rich by an attention to the changeable modes of fancy, and a vitiated preference for the rich and costly, lose view of simple beauty and grandeur. It may seem a paradox, and yet I am firmly persuaded, that it would be easier at this day to give a good taste to the

young savages of America, than to the noble youth of Europe.

Genius, the pride of man, as man is of the creation, has been possessed but by few, even in the brightest ages. Men of superior genius, while they see the rest of mankind painfully struggling to compre hend obvious truths, glance themselves through the most remote consequences, like lightning through a path that cannot be traced. They see the beauties of nature with life and warmth, and paint them forcibly without effort, as the morning sun does the scenes he rises upon; and in several instances, communicate to objects a morning freshness and unaccountable lustre, that is not seen in the creation of nature. The poet, the statuary, the painter, have produced images that left nature far behind.

The constellations of extraordinary personages who appeared in Greece and Rome at or near the same period of time, after ages of darkness to which we know no beginning; and the long barrenness of those countries after in great men, prove that genius owes much of its lustre to a personal contest of glory, and the strong rivalship of great examples within actual view and knowledge; and that great parts alone are not able to lift a person out of barbarity. It is further to be observed, that when the inspiring spirit of the fine arts retired, and left inanimate and cold the breasts of poets, painters, and statuaries, men of taste still remained, who distinguished and admired the beauteous monuments of genius; but the power of execution was lost; and although monarchs loved and courted the arts, yet they refused to return. From whence it is evident, that neither taste, nor natural parts, form the creating genius that inspired the great masters of antiquity, and that they owed their extraordinary powers to something different from both.

If we consider the numbers of men who wrote well, and excelled in every department of the liberal arts, in the ages of genius, and the simplicity that always attends beauty; we must be led to think, that although few perhaps can reach to the supreme beauty of imagination displayed by the first-rate poets, orators, and philosophers; yet most men are capable of just thinking and agreeable writing. Nature lies very near our reflection, and will appear, if we be not misled and prejudiced