his genius, or the strain of his other specula- therefore, to be just as beautiful, if the sense tions for it all resolves into this that all of beauty consisted in the perception of relaobjects appear beautiful, which have the tions. In the next place, it seems to be suffipower of producing a peculiar relaxation of ciently certain, from the experience and comour nerves and fibres, and thus inducing a mon feelings of all men, that the perception of certain degree of bodily languor and sinking) relations among objects is not in itself accomOf all the suppositions that have been at any panied by any pleasure whatever; and in partime hazarded to explain the phenomena of ticular has no conceivable resemblance to the beauty, this, we think, is the most unfortu- emotion we receive from the perception of nately imagined, and the most weakly sup- beauty. When we perceive one ugly old ported. There is no philosophy in the doctrine woman sitting exactly opposite to two other and the fundamental assumption is in every ugly old women, and observe, at the same way contradicted by the most familiar expe- moment, that the first is as big as the other two rience. There is no relaxation of the fibres taken together, we humbly conceive, that this in the perception of beauty-and there is no clear perception of the relations in which these pleasure in the relaxation of the fibres. If three Graces stand to each other, cannot well there were, it would follow, that a warm bath be mistaken for a sense of beauty, and that it i would be by far the most beautiful thing in does not in the least abate or interfere with our the world-and that the brilliant Tights, and sense of their ugliness. Finally, we may obbracing airs of a fine autumn morning, would serve, that the sense of beauty results instantabe the very reverse of beautiful. Accordingly, neously from the perception of the object; though the treatise alluded to will always be whereas the discovery of its relations to other valuable on account of the many fine and just objects must necessarily be a work of time and remarks it contains, we are not aware that reflection, in the course of which the beauty of there is any accurate inquirer into the subject the object, so far from being created or brought (with the exception, perhaps, of Mr. Price, in into notice, must, in fact, be lost sight of and whose hands, however, the doctrine assumes forgotten. a new character) by whom the fundamental principle of the theory has not been explicitly abandoned.

A yet more extravagant doctrine was soon afterwards inculcated, and in a tone of great authority, in a long article from the brilliant pen of Diderot, in the French Encyclopédie; and one which exemplifies, in a very striking manner, the nature of the difficulties with which the discussion is embarrassed. This ingenious person, perceiving at once, that the beauty which we ascribe to a particular class of objects, could not be referred to any pecuhar and inherent quality in the objects themselves, but depended upon their power of exciting certain sentiments in our minds; and being, at the same time, at a loss to discover what common power could belong to so vast a variety of objects as pass under the general appellation of beautiful, or by what tie all the various emotions which are excited by the perception of beauty could be united, was at last driven, by the necessity of keeping his definition sufficiently wide and comprehensive, to hazard the strange assertion, that all objects were beautiful which excite in us the idea of relation; that our sense of beauty consisted in tracing out the relations which the object possessing it might have to other objects; and that its actual beauty was in proportion to the number and clearness of the relations thus suggested and perceived. It is scarcely necessary, we presume, to expose by any arguments the manifest fallacy, or rather the palpable absurdity, of such a theory as this. In the first place, we conceive it to be obvious, that all objects whatever have an Infinite, and consequently, an equal number of relations, and are equally likely to suggest then to those to whom they are presented;or, at all events, it is certain, that ugly and disagreeable objects have just as many relations as those that are agreeable, and ought,

Another more plausible and ingenious theory was suggested by the Père Buffier, and afterwards adopted and illustrated with great talent in the Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds. According to this doctrine, beauty consists, as Aristotle held virtue to do, in mediocrity, or conformity to that which is most usual. Thus a beautiful nose, to make use of Dr. Smith's very apt, though homely, illustration of this doctrine, is one that is neither very long nor very short-very straight nor very much bent-but of an ordinary form and proportion, compared with all the extremes. It is the form, in short, which nature seems to have aimed at in all cases, though she has more frequently deviated from it than hit it; but deviating from it in all directions, all her deviations come nearer to it than they ever do to each other. Thus the most beautiful in every species of creatures bears the greatest resemblance to the whole species, while monsters are so denominated because they bear the least; and thus the beautiful, though in one sense the rarest, as the exact medium is but seldom hit, is invariably the most common, because it is the central point from which all the deviations are the least remote. This view of the matter is adopted by Sir Joshua in its full extent, and is even carried so far by this great artist, that he does not scruple to conclude, "That if we were more used to deformity than beauty, deformity would then lose the idea that is now annexed to it, and take that of beauty;-just as we approve and admire fashions in dress, for no other reason than that we are used to them."

Now, not to dwell upon the very startling conclusion to which these principles must lead, viz. that things are beautiful in proportion as they are ordinary, and that it is merely their familiarity which constitutes their beauty, we would observe, in the first place, that the whole theory seems to have

been suggested by a consideration of animal forms, or perhaps of the human figure exclusively. In these forms, it is quite true that great and monstrous deviations from the usual proportions are extremely disagreeable. But this, we have no doubt, arises entirely from some idea of pain or disaster attached to their existence; or from their obvious unfitness for the functions they have to perform. In vegetable forms, accordingly, these irregularities excite no such disgust; it being, in fact, the great object of culture, in almost all the more beautiful kinds, to produce what may be called monstrosities. And, in mineral substances, where the idea of suffering is still more completely excluded, it is notorious that, so far from the more ordinary configurations being thought the most beautiful, this epithet is scarcely ever employed but to denote some rare and unusual combination of veins, colours, or dimensions. As to landscapes, again, and almost all the works of art, without exception, the theory is plainly altogether incapable of application. In what sense, for example, can it be said that the beauty of natural scenery consists in mediocrity; or that those landscapes are the most beautiful that are the most common? or what meaning can we attach to the proposition, that the most beautiful building, or picture, or poem, is that which bears the nearest resemblance to all the individuals of its class, and is, upon the whole, the most ordinary and common?

quence of the fallacy which lurks i. the vague and general proposition of those things being beautiful which are neither too big nor too lit tle, too massive nor too slender, &c.; from which it was concluded, that beauty must consist in mediocrity:-not considering that the particle too merely denotes those degrees which are exclusive of beauty, without in any way fixing what those degrees are. For the plain meaning of these phrases is, that the rejected objects are too massive or too slender to be beautiful; and, therefore, to say that an object is beautiful which is neither too big nor too little, &c. is really saying nothing more than that beautiful objects are such as are not in any degree ugly or disagreeable. The illustration as to the effects of use or custom in the article of dress is singularly inaccurate and delusive; the fact being, that we never admire the dress which we are most accustomed to see which is that of the common people-but the dress of the few who are distinguished by rank or opulence; and that we require no more custom or habit to make us admire this dress, whatever it may be, than is necessary to associate it in our thoughts with the wealth, and dignity, and graceful manners of those who wear it.

We need say nothing in this place of the opinions expressed on the subject of beauty by Dr. Gerard, Dr. Blair, and a whole herd of rhetoricians; because none of them pretend to have any new or original notions with regard to it, and, in general, have been at no pains to reconcile or render consistent the various accounts of the matter, which they have contented themselves with assembling and laying before their readers all together, as affording among them the best explanation that could be offered of the question. Thus they do not scruple to say, that the sense of beauty is sometimes produced by the mere organic af fection of the senses of sight or hearing; at other times, by a perception of a kind of regular variety; and in other instances by the association of interesting conceptions;-thus abandoning altogether any attempt to answer the radical question-how the feeling of beauty should be excited by such opposite causes--and confounding together, without any attempt at discrimination, those theories which imply the existence of a separate sense-or faculty, and those which resolve our sense of beauty into other more simple or familiar emotions.

To a doctrine which is liable to these obvious and radical objections, it is not perhaps necessary to make any other; but we must remark farther, first, that it necessarily supposes that our sense of beauty is, in all cases, preceded by such a large comparison between various individuals of the same species, as may enable us to ascertain that average or mean form in which beauty is supposed to consist; and, consequently, that we could never discover any object to be beautiful antecedent to such a comparison; and, secondly, that, even if we were to allow that this theory afforded some explanation of the superior beauty of any one object, compared with others of the same class, it plainly furnishes no explanation whatever of the superior beauty of one class of objects compared with another. We may believe, if we please, that one peacock is handsomer than another, because it approaches more nearly to the average or mean form of peacocks in general; but this reason will avail us nothing whatever Of late years, however, we have had three in explaining why any peacock is handsomer publications on the subject of a far higher than any pelican or penguin. We may say, character-we mean, Mr. Alison's Essays on without manifest absurdity, that the most the Nature and Principles of Taste-Mr. Payne beautiful pig is that which has least of the Knight's Analytical Inquiry into the same subextreme qualities that sometimes occur in thejects-and Mr. Dugal Stewart's Dissertations tribe; but it would be palpably absurd to give this reason, or any thing like it, for the superior beauty of the tribe of antelopes or spaniels.

The notion, in short, seems to have been hastily adopted by the ingenious persons who have maintained it, partly upon the narrow ground of the disgust produced by monsters in the animal creation, which has been already sufficiently explained-and partly in conse

on the Beautiful and on Taste, in his volume of Philosophical Essays. All these works possess an infinite deal of merit, and have among them disclosed almost all the truth that is to be known on the subject; though, as it seems to us, with some little admixture of error, from which it will not, however, be difficult to sepa rate it.

Mr. Alison maintains, that all beauty, or at

least that all the beauty of material objects, the beauty of the object which first suggest depends on the associations that may have ed them depended on its having produced a connected them with the ordinary affections series of ideas of emotion, or even of agreea. or emotions of our nature; and in this, which ble emotions, there seems to be no good reais the fundamental point of his theory, we son for doubting, that ugly objects may thus conceive him to be no less clearly right, than be as beautiful as any other, and that beauty he is convincing and judicious in the copious and ugliness may be one and the same thing. and beautiful illustrations by which he has Such is the danger, as it appears to us, of de Bought to establish its truth. When he pro- serting the object itself, or going beyond its ceeds, however, to assert, that our sense of immediate effect and impression, in order to beauty consists not merely in the suggestion discover the sources of its beauty. Our view of ideas of emotion, but in the contemplation of the matter is safer, we think, and far more a connected series or train of such ideas, and simple. We conceive the object to be assoindicates a state of mind in which the facul- ciated either in our past experience, or by ties, half active and half passive, are given up some universal analogy, with pleasures, or to a sort of reverie or musing, in which they emotions that upon the whole are pleasant; may wander, though among kindred impres- and that these associated pleasures are instanions, far enough from the immediate object taneously suggested, as soon as the object is of perception, we will confess that he not only presented, and by the first glimpse of its physeems to us to advance a very questionable sical properties, with which, indeed, they are proposition, but very essentially to endanger consubstantiated and confounded in our sen. the evidence, as well as the consistency, of sations. his general doctrine. We are far from deny- The work of Mr. Knight is more lively, vaing, that, in minds of sensibility and of reflect-rious, and discursive, than Mr. Alison's-but mg habits, the contemplation of beautiful ob- not so systematic or conclusive. It is the jects will be apt, especially in moments of cleverer book of the two-but not the most leisure, and when the mind is vacant, to give philosophical discussion of the subject. He rise to such trains of thought, and to such pro- agrees with Mr. Alison in holding the most tracted meditations; but we cannot possibly important, and, indeed, the only considerable admit that their existence is necessary to the part of beauty, to depend upon association; perception of beauty, or that it is in this state and has illustrated this opinion with a great of mind exclusively that the sense of beauty variety of just and original observations. But exists. The perception of beauty, on the con- he maintains, and maintains stoutly, that there trary, we hold to be, in most cases, quite in- is a beauty independent of association-prior stantaneous, and altogether as immediate as to it, and more original and fundamental-the the perception of the external qualities of the primitive and natural beauty of colours and object to which it is ascribed. Indeed, it seems sounds. Now, this we look upon to be a only necessary to recollect, that it is to a pre-heresy; and a heresy inconsistent with the sent material object that we actually ascribe very first principles of Catholic philosophy. and refer this beauty, and that the only thing We shall not stop at present to give our reato be explained is, how this object comes to sons for this opinion, which we shall illustrate appear beautiful. In the long train of inter- at large before we bring this article to a close; esting meditations, however, to which Mr.-but we beg leave merely to suggest at preAlison refers-in the delightful reveries in sent, that if our sense of beauty be confesswhich he would make the sense of beauty edly, in most cases, the mere image or reflecconsist-it is obvious that we must soon lose tion of pleasures or emotions that have been Bight of the external object which gave the associated with objects in themselves indifferfirst impulse to our thoughts; and though we ent, it cannot fail to appear strange that it may afterwards reflect upon it, with increased should also on some few occasions be a mere interest and gratitude, as the parent of so organic or sensual gratification of these parmany charming images, it is impossible, we ticular organs. Language, it is believed, conceive, that the perception of its beauty can affords no other example of so whimsical a ever depend upon a long series of various and combination of different objects under one apshifting emotions. pellation; or of the confounding of a direct physical sensation with the suggestion of a social or sympathetic moral feeling. would observe also, that while Mr. Knight stickles so violently for this alloy of the senses in the constitution of beauty, he admits, unequivocally, that sublimity is, in every instance, and in all cases, the effect of associa tion alone. Yet sublimity and beauty, in any just or large sense, and with a view to the philosophy of either, are manifestly one and the same; nor is it conceivable to us, that, if sublimity be always the result of an association with ideas of power or danger, beauty can possibly be, in any case, the result of a mere pleasurable impulse on the nerves of the eye or the ear. We shall return, however, to

It likewise occurs to us to observe, that if every thing was beautiful, which was the occasion of a train of ideas of emotion, it is not easy to see why objects that are called ugly should not be entitled to that appellation. If they are sufficiently ugly not to be viewed with indifference, they too will give rise to ideas of emotion, and those ideas are just as likely to run into trains and series, as those of a more agreeable description. Nay, as contrast itself is one of the principles of association, it is not at all unlikely, that, in the train of impressive ideas which the sight of ugly objects may excite, a transition may be ultimately made to such as are connected with pleasure; and, therefore, if the perception of

We

still more painful are contemplated with eagerness and delight: and therefore we must not be surprised to find, that many of the pleasing sensations of beauty or sublimity resolve themselves ultimately into recollections of feelings that may appear to have a very opposite character. The sum of the whole is, that every feeling which it is agreeable to experience, to recal, or to witness, may become the source of beauty in external objects, when it is so connected with them as that their appearance reminds us of that feeling. Now, in real life, and from daily experience and observation, we know that it is agreeable, in the first place, to recollect our own pleasurable sensations, or to be enabled to form a lively conception of the pleasures of other men, or even of sentient beings of any description. We know likewise, from the same sure authority, that there is a certain delight in the remembrance of our past, or the conception of our future emotions, even though attended with great pain, provided the pain be not forced too rudely on the mind, and be softened by the accompaniment of any milder feeling. And finally, we know, in the same manner, that the spectacle or conception of the emotions of others, even when in a high degree painful, is extremely interesting and attractive, and draws us away, not only from the consideration of indifferent objects, but even from the pursuit of light or frivolous enjoyments. All these are plain and familiar facts; of the existence of which, however they may be explained, no one can entertain the slightest doubt-and into which, therefore, we shall have made no inconsiderable progress, if we can resolve the more mysterious fact, of the emotions we receive from the contemplation of sublimity or beauty.

which are sometimes excited by the spectacle of beauty.

Of the feelings, by their connection with which external objects become beautiful, we do not think it necessary to speak more minutely;—and, therefore, it only remains, under this preliminary view of the subject, to explain the nature of that connection by which we conceive this effect to be produced. Here, also, there is but little need for minuteness, or fulness of enumeration. Almost every tie, by which two objects can be bound together in the imagination, in such a manner as that the presentment of the one shall recal the memory of the other; or, in other words, almost every possible relation which can subsist between such objects, may serve to connect the things we call sublime and beautiful, with feelings that are interesting or delightful. It may be useful, however, to class these bonds of association between mind and matter in a rude and general way.

It appears to us, then, that objects are sublime or beautiful, first, when they are the natural signs, and perpetual concomitants of pleasurable sensations, or, at any rate, of some lively feeling or emotion in ourselves or in some other sentient beings; or, secondly, when they are the arbitrary or accidental concomitants of such feelings; or, thirdly, when they bear some analogy or fanciful resemblance to things with which these emotions are necessarily connected. In endeavouring to illus trate the nature of these several relations, we shall be led to lay before our readers some proofs that appear to us satisfactory of the truth of the general theory.

The most obvious, and the strongest association that can be established between inward feelings and external objects is, where Our proposition then is, that these emotions the object is necessarily and universally conare not original emotions, nor produced di- nected with the feeling by the law of nature, rectly by any material qualities in the objects so that it is always presented to the senses which excite them; but are reflections, or when the feeling is impressed upon the mind images, of the more radical and familiar -as the sight or the sound of laughter, with emotions to which we have already alluded; the feeling of gaiety-of weeping, with disand are occasioned, not by any inherent virtue tress-of the sound of thunder, with ideas in the objects before us, but by the accidents, of danger and power. Let us dwell for a if we may so express ourselves, by which moment on the last instance.-Nothing, perthese may have been enabled to suggest or haps, in the whole range of nature, is more recal to us our own past sensations or sympa- strikingly and universally sublime than the thies. We might almost venture, indeed, to sound we have just mentioned; yet it seems lay it down as an axiom, that, except in the obvious, that the sense of sublinity is proplain and palpable case of bodily pain or duced, not by any quality that is perceived pleasure, we can never be interested in any by the ear, but altogether by the impression thing but the fortunes of sentient beings; of power and of danger that is necessarily and that every thing partaking of the nature of made upon the mind, whenever that sound is mental emotion, must have for its object the heard. That it is not produced by any pecu feelings, past, present, or possible, of something liarity in the sound itself, is certain, from the capable of sensation. Independent, therefore, mistakes that are frequently made with reof all evidence, and without the help of any gard to it. The noise of a cart rattling over explanation, we should have been apt to con- the stones, is often mistaken for thunder; and clude, that the emotions of beauty and sub- as long as the mistake lasts, this very vulgar limity must have for their objects the suffer- and insignificant noise is actually felt to be ings or enjoyments of sentient beings;-and prodigiously sublime. It is so felt, however, to reject, as intrinsically absurd and incredi- it is perfecily plain, merely because it is then ble, the supposition, that material objects, associated with ideas of prodigious power and which obviously do neither hurt nor delight undefined danger;-and the sublimity is acthe body, should yet excite, by their mere cordingly destroyed, the moment the assophysical qualities, the very powerful emotions ciation is dissolved, though the sound itself