BEAUTIFUL (THE).

SINCE We have quoted Plato on love, why should we not quote him on "The Beautiful," since beauty causes love. It is curious to know how a Greek speaks of the beautiful more than two thousand years since.

The man initiated into the sacred mysteries, when he sees a beautiful face accompanied by a divine form, a something more than mortal, feels a secret emotion, and I know not what respectful fear. He regards this figure as a divinity.... When the influence of beauty enters into his soul by his eyes, he burns; the wings of his soul are bedewed; they lose the hardness which retains their germs, and liquify themselves; these germs, swelling beneath the roots of its wings, they expand from every part of the soul (for the soul had wings formerly) &c. &c.

very

I am willing to believe that nothing is finer than this discourse of the divine Plato; but it does not give us clear ideas of the nature of the beautiful. Åsk a toad what is beauty-the great beauty, the To Kalon; he will answer that it is his female with two great round eyes coming out of her little head, her large flat mouth, her yellow belly, and brown back. Ask a negro of Guinea: beauty is to him a black oily skin, sunken eyes, and a flat nose.

Ask the Devil: he will tell you that the beautiful consists in a pair of horns, four claws, and a tail. Then consult the philosophers: they will answer you with jargon; they must have something conformable to the archetype of the essence of the beautiful,-to the

To Kalon.

I was once attending a tragedy near a philosopher. How beautiful that is, said he. What do you find beautiful, asked I? It is, said he, that the author has attained his object. The next day he took his me-dicine, which did him some good. It has attained its object, cried I to him; it is a beautiful medicine. He comprehended that it could not be said that a medicine is beautiful; and that to apply to any thing the

epithet beautiful, it must cause admiration and pleasure. He allowed that the tragedy had inspired him with these two sentiments, and that it was the To Kalon, the beautiful.

We made a journey to England. The same piece. was played, and, although ably translated, it made all the spectators yawn. Oh, oh! said he, the To Kalon is not the same with the English as with the French. He concluded, after many reflections, that " The Beautiful" is often merely relative, as that which is decent at Japan, is indecent at Rome; and that which is the fashion at Paris, is not so at Pekin; and he was thereby spared the trouble of composing a long treatise on the Beautiful.

There are actions which the whole world consider fine. A challenge passed between two of Cæsar's officers, mortal enemies, not to shed each other's blood behind a thicket by tierce and quarte, as among us, but to decide which of them would best defend the camp of the Romans, about to be attacked by the Barbarians. One of the two, after having repulsed the enemy, was near falling; the other flew to his assistance, saved his life, and gained the victory.

A friend devotes himself to death for his friend, a son for his father. The Algonquin, the French, the Chinese, will mutually say that all that is very beautiful, that such actions give them pleasure, and that they admire them.

They will say the same of great moral maxims; of that of Zoroaster: "If in doubt that an action be just, desist." Of that of Confucius: "Forget injuries; never forget benefits."

The negro, with round eyes and flattened nose, who would not give the ladies of our court the name of beautiful, would give it without hesitation to these actions, and these maxims. The wicked man even recognises the beauty of the virtues which he cannot imitate. The beautiful which only strikes the senses, the imagination, and what is called the spirit, is then often uncertain; the beauty which strikes the heart is not.*

* This distinction between the operation of physical and mo. ral beauty on the different opinions and tastes of mankind, is

You will find a number of people who will tell you they have found nothing beautiful in three-fourths of the Iliad; but nobody will deny that the devotion of Codrus for his people was fine, supposing it was true.

Brother Attinet, a jesuit, a native of Dijon, was employed as designer in the country-house of the emperor Camhi, at the distance of some leagues from Pekin.

"This country-house," says he in one of his letters to M. Dapant, "is larger than the town of Dijon. It is divided into a thousand habitations on one line: each one has its courts, its parterres, its gardens, and its waters; the front of each is ornamented with gold varnish and paintings. In the vast enclosures of the park, hills have been raised by hand from twenty to sixty feet high. The vallies are watered by an infinite number of canals, which run a considerable distance to join and form lakes and seas. We float on these seas in boats varnished and gilt, from twelve to thirteen fathoms long and four wide. These barks have

1

magnificent saloons, and the borders of the canals are covered with houses, all in different tastes. Every house has its gardens and cascades. You go from one valley to another by alleys, alternately ornamented with pavilions and grottoes. No two vallies are alike; the largest of all is surrounded by a colonnade, behind which are gilded buildings. All the apartments of these houses correspond in magnificence with the outside. All the canals have bridges at stated distances; these bridges are bordered with balustrades of white marble sculptured in basso-relievo.

"In the middle of the great sea is raised a rock, and

pleasantly illustrated, and up to a certain point correct. It is to he feared, however, that the one as well as the other is much affected by education and habit; and that the modern doctrine discovered by Hume, and so elaborately developed by Alison, which connects both physical and moral taste,―more properly called sentiment, with the associative principle, will equally apply to both. It however happens, that, with rare exceptions, the foundations of morality must be similar everywhere.-T.

VOL. II.

C

on this rock is a square pavilion, in which are more than an hundred apartments. From this square pavilion there is a view of all the palace, all the houses, and all the gardens of this immense enclosure, and there are more than four hundred of them.

"When the emperor gives a fête, all these buildings are illuminated in an instant, and from every house there are fire-works.

"This is not all: at the end of what they call the sea is a great fair, held by the emperor's officers. Vessels come from the great sea to arrive at this fair. The courtiers disguise themselves as merchants and artificers of all sorts; one keeps a coffee-house, another a tavern; one takes the profession of a thief, another that of the officer who pursues him. The emperor and all the ladies of the court come to buy stuffs, the false merchants cheat them as much as they can; they tell them that it is shameful to dispute so much about the price, and that they are poor customers. Their majesties reply, that the merchants are knaves; the latter are angry, and affect to depart; they are appeased; the emperor buys all, and makes lotteries of it for all his court. Further on are spectacles of all

sorts."

When brother Attinet came from China to Versailles, he found it small and dull. The Germans, who were delighted to stroll about its groves, were astonished that brother Attinet was so difficult. This is another reason which determines me not to write a treatise on the Beautiful.

BEES. *

THE Bees may be regarded as superior to the human race in this, that from their own substance they produce another which is useful; while, of all our secretions, there

* Huber and others have superseded, by their accurate observations, much of Voltaire's conjecture and remark on the natural history of Bees. His incidental observation being, as usual, extremely pleasant, is retained.

is not one good for anything; nay, there is not one which does not render mankind disagreeable.

I have been charmed to find, that the swarms which turn out of the hive are much milder than our sons when they leave college. The young bees, then, sting no one; or at least but rarely and in extraordinary cases. They suffer themselves to be carried quietly, in the bare hand, to the hive which is destined for them. But no sooner have they learned, in their new habitation, to know their interests, than they become like us, and make war. I have seen very peaceable bees go for six months to labour in a neighbouring meadow covered with flowers which secreted them. When the mowers came, they rushed furiously from their hive upon those who were about to steal their property, and put them to flight.

We find in the Proverbs attributed to Solomon, that "there are four things, the least upon earth, but which are wiser than the wise men :-the ants, a little people, who lay up food during the harvest; the hares, a weak people, who lie on stones; the grasshoppers, who have no kings, and who journey in flocks; and the lizards, which work with their hands, and dwell in the palaces of kings." I know not how Solomon forgot the bees, whose instinct seems very superior to that of hares, which do not lie on stone; or of lizards, with whose genius I am not acquainted. Moreover, I shall always prefer a bee to a grasshopper.

The bees have, in all ages, furnished the poet with descriptions, comparisons, allegories, and fables. Mandeville's celebrated "Fable of the Bees" made a great noise in England. Here is a short sketch of it:Once the bees, in worldly things, Had a happy government;

And their labourers and their kings
Made them wealthy and content:

But some greedy drones at last
Found their way into the hive;
These, in idleness to thrive,
Told the bees they ought to fast.

* A hasty and incorrect assertion.