ness; all that is permanently odious and degrading consists in, or is connected with, moral evil. It is to moral associations, as is well known to all who have studied the principles of taste, that the natural world owes its greatest charms. It has power over us, principally as a collection of symbols and emblems representing moral qualities, or suggesting them to the imagination. The modes of moral beauty and sublimity, of what is agreeable, excellent, or ennobling, are numberless; and may be brought before us in many ways. The spirit which has power to touch the heart, may breathe in a song of tenderness and disinterested affection, or be heard in the clarion voice, of power to cheer in the mid battle; it may gather round the grave the sorrows, recollections, and hopes of an immortal being; it may give energy to language to lift the soul to its God; it may utter the earnest tones of persuasion; it may communicate an irresistible force to reasoning; it may speak in strong indignation; it may pour moral life through a tale of fiction, and it may give a sublime interest to what without it would be only painful, the description of human suffering and misery. In this its power is conspicuously shown. Scenes of suffering become fit subjects for poetry or fiction, principally, because they afford an opportunity for the exhibition of high and uncommon virtues. The delight with which we contemplate these virtues, and our sympathy with them, counteract and control the pain, which alone might be otherwise felt from our sympathy with the sufferings described.

In the drama, in fictitious narrative, or whenever the poet brings before us imaginary characters, moral truth and beauty consist in representing them with such qualities as are congruous to each other, and may exist together; and in exhibiting these qualities, such as they are, accompanied with their proper effects. The writer must present no deceptive portraitures of our moral nature. He must show what is good as good, and what is evil as evil. The proper purpose of his imaginary world and the beings of his creation, is to give a connected, complete, distinct, and striking view of characters, qualities, actions, and their consequences, which in the real world, we see only in an imperfect state, partially and by glimpses, implicated in many accidental connexions, and operating obscurely through a course of years. If he accomplish this purpose, his pictures are true to nature; they embody the results of human observation and experience,

and they correspond, therefore, to the lessons of wisdom and virtue.

Thus then, to use the terms in their most extensive sense, the just conception and true expression of moral goodness, constitute the supreme excellence of poetry; and unless it possess this excellence in some degree or other, poetry is of little worth. The strain which is heard must be in accordance with the harmony of the universe, with the music of its unseen spheres; or it will be only discord to him, who has so raised himself, that his ears are open to that solemn sound. There can be nothing beautiful which is opposite in its nature to the highest beauty; but many inferior things may partake of its reflected lustre, or have an according beauty of their own." The shells and shining pebbles on the seashore, which, as Cicero tells us, Scipio and Lælius stooped to pick up, with the feelings of boyhood returning upon them, incredibiliter repuerascere soliti, may please us with their fine forms and colors, and awaken a train of touching thoughts and recollections, even while the unbounded ocean spreads before us, a visible emblem of infinity, brilliant with a flood of light, and rolling, with ceaseless sound, its eternal and evervarying waves. Moral excellence, though the highest, is not the only source of refined and innocent gratification in the world of the imagination any more than in the real world. Unfortunately too, in correspondence with what we find in the real world, the pleasure which poetry affords, may arise from the gratification of depraved passions, and a corrupt taste. It may be admired for qualities the very opposites of those which constitute its preeminent worth. It may be made to minister to evil, as well as good; and its services, in the one case, as in the other, will have their reward. The taste of a man is formed upon his character, or rather it is only an expression of his character. Individuals will be gratified by the same objects presented to their imagination, as gratify their inclinations and appetites in real life, and with the expression of those emotions and passions which they are accustomed to indulge. The profligate will be pleased with what is licentious; the illtempered man, with virulent sarcasm; the unprincipled, with the levity that regards nothing as serious; the irreligious man, with profaneness; the disappointed and envious, with the bitter language of discontent and misanthropy; and thus, in these and in other instances, gross faults may form with certain readers the chief recommendation

of a work. They have sometimes contributed much to the temporary popularity of writings.

The skill of the artist, likewise, may be shown, when the subject about which it is employed is offensive; and the perception of the skill of the artist constitutes one of the principal sources of the pleasure afforded by a work of art. The display of intellectual power, of the mastery of mind, is, intrinsically, a source of elevating and grateful feelings. We sympathize with the energy which we perceive in action. But the highest gratification from this source can be afforded, only when the faculties of the mind are employed about subjects worthy of the intellectual and moral nature of man. He who has no taste for the highest beauty, can have but an imperfect perception even of its inferior modes; and must therefore want the power of giving their just expression. He who does not sympathize strongly with what is most excellent or lovely, and consequently what is most delightful, in character, can have but little skill in portraying it. His powers, however great, must be limited to a narrow circle. He cannot represent to us the finer and nobler forms of man's nature, though he may give a striking picture of it as disfigured and imperfect, and distorted by the violence of passion. Moral goodness admits of an indefinite variety of modifications and degrees, according to the intellectual power of the mind in which it resides. As we advance in improvement, new views of it present themselves; we perceive more clearly its extent and relations; our judgment is more correct, our moral sensibility becomes more delicate, the disguise which had concealed passions and failings, and perhaps made them appear as virtues, drops off; the incongruities of character pass away; we are acting in a higher sphere, and our hopes, affections, tastes, and motives are changed. The perfect exercise of moral goodness supposes the exercise of the highest intellect. It cannot be conceived of by a mind of a much lower order. It cannot, therefore, be depicted by such a mind. Wherever, then, it is beautifully or strikingly exhibited in thought or action, there the finest and rarest powers of intellect are displayed. The passages which touch us deeply by their moral beauty or sublimity stand out from the common mass of literature. A single trait of this kind is of more value than many volumes, which still maintain their place upon our shelves. How few readers are there of Corneille's Horace, who remember a single passage of that play, except

the burst of moral grandeur in the famous Qu' il mourut'? The whole sixty plays of Beaumont and Fletcher would be dearly purchased by the loss of Milton's Comus. The story of La Roche is worth half the volumes of English periodical papers, and who would part with the lovely vision of Grace Nugent, to save from destruction all the novels written before the age of Miss Edgeworth.

The difficulty of attaining to any high degree of moral beauty or sublimity, in works of imagination or eloquence, and the rare genius which it requires, may appear from the unsuccessful attempts which have been made. There is a crowd of writers, who, with the best intentions, have failed from incorrectness of judgment and moral taste, from the imperfection and narrowness of their views, from their coldness, their want of imagination, or from some inability to communicate to others what they themselves perceived and felt. In those works of eloquence which are directly addressed to men as immortal beings, in the sermons of Christian preachers, we might expect some near approach to that most excellent quality of writing which has been described. But one may read many volumes of English sermons, composed by writers of no mean talents, without finding a single passage which thrills the heart, or has any inspiring power. In fiction it has been said, that the exhibition of a perfect character is uninteresting and unnatural. But the perfection of our nature, is in no proper sense of the word unnatural; est autem virtus nihil aliud quam in se perfecta, et ad summum perducta natura;—and if the attempts to exhibit the most pleasing, and the most admirable qualities, as embodied in an individual, have been uninteresting; it is not because they have been executed, but because they have failed. The failure, indeed, has often been striking. There are religious novels, for instance, in which the individual intended as an example of Christian excellence, is represented as narrow-minded, with erroneous views of religion and duty, and somewhat ostentatious, dogmatical, and censorious. Richardson was not a writer of ordinary powers; and in his Sir Charles Grandison he has endeavoured to give us in the best manner, his finest conceptions of moral excellence. There is much to admire and to be pleased with. But the virtues of Sir Charles are those which flow from unvaried prosperity, not the highest, nor the most difficult, nor the most interesting. He is so lauded and adored, that the reader grows

weary and almost splenetic with his praises; and when wo have laid aside the volumes, the author's beau ideal of moral beauty leaves scarcely any other image in the mind, except that of a very rich, very fortunate, well principled, well intentioned, well behaved, and rather formal gentleman, who, we fear, will be made a little self-conceited by the admiration of all about him. That genius and elevation of soul which might enable one to portray a character morally perfect, to bring down from heaven expletam et perfectam formam honestatis, is perhaps as little likely to be found as such a character itself; and if the perfection of man's nature were really presented to our minds, it would probably be very different from all ordinary conceptions of it; far more sublime as well as more lovely. To use again the language of Cicero, whom we have been led to quote so often, because he expresses the truest and noblest sentiments with the most splendid and glowing eloquence, it would appear quiddam amplum atque magnificum, omnia humana non tolerabilia solum, sed etiam levia ducens, altum quiddam et excelsum, nihil timens, nemini cedens, semper invictum; 'something grand and magnificent, regarding all the accidents of life as not only tolerable but of light concern, something high and exalted, fearing nothing, yielding to no one, always unconquered.'

The characters presented to us by poetry and fiction excite our interest in them, and give us direct pleasure in their contemplation, from the same qualities of mind and heart, as individuals in real life. The just exhibition of vicious character, may afford us pleasure, but it is a pleasure of a different kind, inferior in its nature. But it is not by the full exhibition of particular characters, alone, that poetry is adapted to delight, but by every thing which accords with our moral and intellectual nature as it unfolds itself in its progress toward unlimited improvement. But few poets, however, have felt that in this consisted the excellence and the power of their art.

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Moral beauty being the highest beauty, it follows that a correct and refined moral taste is the most important constituent of a correct and refined taste in literature. Literary taste, without it, must be essentially defective and incorrect. As the expression of moral goodness in some form or another, constitutes a principal charm in almost every work of art, adapted to afford much gratification to a mind of large views and just sentiments, he, who has not a correct perception and strong feeling of its