themselves, at pleasure, between earth and heaven! Even the genius of Shakspeare, in attempting to amplify the graces of a favorite Hero, has reserved for the last place in the climax, an attitude suggested by this imaginary attribute of the heathen divinities.

"A station, like the herald Mercury,

New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill."

A still more obvious example, leading to the same conclusion, may be drawn from the agreeable effects of lights and colors; the very appearances from which I conceive our first notions of beauty are derived. Few, I presume, will venture to assert, that it is altogether owing to custom, that the eye delights to repose itself on the soft verdure of a field; or that there is nothing naturally attractive in the splendid illuminations of summer. From the regular vicissitudes of day and of night, custom (if nothing else were to operate) should entitle them both, in the same degree, to the appellation of Beautiful; but such, certainly, has not been the judgment of mankind in any age of the world. "Truly the light is sweet, and it is a pleasant thing for the eyes to behold the sun."

The criticisms which I have hazarded on the speculations of these writers do not affect the certainty, nor detract from the importance of the assumption on which they proceed. The only point in dispute is, whether individual objects please in consequence of their approximation to the usual forms and colors of nature; or whether Nature herself is not pronounced to be Beautiful, in consequence of the regular profusion in which she exhibits forms and colors intrinsically pleasing. Upon either supposition, great praise is due to those who have so happily illustrated the process by which taste is guided in the study of ideal beauty; a process which Reynolds must be allowed to have traced and described with admirable sagacity, even by such as think the most lightly of the metaphysical doctrine which he has blended with his statement of the fact.

I must own, indeed, that it was not without some surprise, I first read the Essay in which the opinion I have now been controverting is proposed by this great artist.

To have found the same paradox in the works of an abstract philosopher, however distinguished for ingenuity and learning, would have been entirely of a piece with the other extravagancies which abound in books of science; but it is difficult to reconcile the genuine enthusiasm with which Reynolds appears to have enjoyed the Beauties, both of Nature and of Art, with the belief, that "if Beauty were as rare as deformity now is, and deformity as prevalent as actual Beauty, these words would entirely change their present meanings, in the same manner in which the word yes might become a negative, and no an affirmative, in consequence of a general convention among mankind." The truth has probably been, that, in the judgment of Reynolds, (as too often happens with all men in the more serious concerns of life,) a prepossession in favor of a particular conclusion, added verisimilitude to the premises of which it was supposed to be the consequence; and that a long experience of the practical value of the maxim which it was his leading object to recommend, blinded him to the absurdity of the theory which he employed to support it.*

See Note (Y.)

ON THE BEAUTIFUL.

PART SECOND.

ON THE BEAUTIFUL, WHEN PRESENTED TO THE POWER OF IMAGINATION.

*

FROM the account given of Conception in my Analysis of the intellectual faculties, it appears, that we have a power of representing to ourselves the absent objects of our perceptions, and also the sensations which we remember to have felt. I can picture out, for example, in my own mind, or (to express myself without a metaphor) I can think upon any remarkable building, or any remarkable scene with which I am familiarly acquainted. I can, in like manner, (though by no means with the same distinctness and steadiness) think of the Smell of a Rose, of the Taste of a Pine-Apple, or of the Sound of a Trumpet. In consequence of the various functions of this power, which extend to the provinces of all the different senses, the old English writers, (after the example of the schoolmen) frequently distinguish it by the title of Sensus Communis, a phrase which they employ precisely in the same acceptation in which I use the word conception. It is in this way that the phrase common sense (which has now so many other meanings, both popular and philosophical) is employed by Sir John Davis, in his Poem on the Immortality of the Soul; by Dr. Cudworth in his Treatise of Immutable Morality; and by many others both of an earlier and of a later date.

To the peculiar ease and vivacity with which we can recall the perceptions of Sight, it is owing, that our thoughts are incomparably more frequently occupied in such visual representations, than in conceiving Smells, Tastes, or Sounds; and that, when we think of these last sensations, we generally strive to lay hold of them

* See Philosophy of the Human Mind, vol. i.

by means of some visible object with which they are associated. I can easily, for example, think of the form and color of a Rose, with little or no idea of its smell; but when I wish to conceive the smell as distinctly as possible, I find that the most effectual means I can use, is to conceive the flower itself to be presented to my eye. The sense of Sight, accordingly, maintains the same preeminence over our other senses, in furnishing materials to the power of Conception, that in its actual exercise belongs to it, as the great channel of our acquired information, and the habitual medium of our intercourse with things external. If there is any difference between the two cases, its preeminence is still more remarkable in the former than in the latter.

In treating of the Beauty of Perceptible Objects, I have already endeavoured to explain how this word comes to be applied to qualities specifically and essentially different from each other, in consequence of the indivisible simplicity of the emotion which they excite in the mind, while they are presented to it at one and the same moment. The solution is more obviously satisfactory, where these qualities produce their effect through the same common channel of Vision; and this they do in every case, but that of the beauties which we are supposed to perceive by the organ of Hearing. There, it must be owned, the former principles do not apply in all their extent; but to compensate for any deficiency in their application to this class of our pleasures, a variety of peculiarities were mentioned as characteristical of Sounds, which seem to me to place their beauties nearly on a footing with those which are more immediately attached to the perceptions of the eye. The same observations hold still more completely with respect to the corresponding Conceptions of these different qualities. The features of a Beautiful Woman; the amiable affections which they express; and the musical tones which accord with this expression, however intimately connected in our thoughts when the object is before us, are united still more completely, when the power of Conception (the Sensus Communis of the intellect) attempts to grasp them all in one com

bination. In this last case, too, it is the picture alone which strongly and permanently fixes the attention; and its agreeable concomitants add to the effect rather by the association of fugitive impressions or feelings, than by that of Conceptions, on which we are able steadily to dwell.

The manner in which Conception is subservient to Imagination, and the grounds of that conspicuous and prominent place which, in all the creations of the latter power, is invariably occupied by images borrowed from Sight, have been already sufficiently explained. It is from the sense of Sight accordingly (as was formerly remarked) that Imagination has derived its name; and it is extremely worthy of observation, that to this power, and to the nearly allied one of Fancy, the epithet beautiful has exclusively been applied among all our various intellectual faculties. We speak of a beautiful imagination, and a beautiful fancy; and to the poet, who is supposed to unite both, we ascribe a beautiful genius. But it is not to visible things, nor to conceptions derived by any of our senses from the material world, that the province of Imagination is confined. We may judge of this from that combination of intellectual gratifications which we receive through the medium of Poetry; an art which addresses itself, in the first instance, to the ear; but which aspires to unite with the organic charm of numbers, whatever pleasures imagination is able to supply. These pleasures (as I have elsewhere observed) are as various as the objects of human thought, and the sources of human happiness. "All the beauties of external nature; " if I may be allowed to quote here a few sentences from another work; "all that is amiable or interesting, or respectable in human character; all that excites and engages our benevolent affections; all those truths which make the heart feel itself better and more happy;-all these supply materials out of which the poet forms and peoples a world of his own, where no inconveniences damp our enjoyments, and where no shades darken our prospects."

"The measured composition in which the poet expresses himself, is only one of the means which he employs