that I am apt to be lost and bewildered in abstractions and generalities, but a particular thing is better suited to my faculties. I find it easy to consider and keep in view the objects of sense; let us therefore try to discover what their beauty is, or wherein it consists; and so, by the help of these sensible things, as a scale or ladder, ascend to moral and intellectual beauty. Be pleased then to inform me, what it is we call beauty in the objects of sense? Alc. Every one knows beauty is that which pleases. Euph. There is then beauty in the smell of a rose, or the taste of an apple. Alc. By no means. Beauty is, to speak properly, perceived only by the eye. Euph. It cannot therefore be defined in general that which pleaseth. Alc. I grant it cannot. Euph. How then shall we limit or define it? Alciphron, after a short pause, said, that beauty consisted in a certain symmetry or proportion pleasing to the eye. Euph. Is this proportion one and the same in all things, or is it different in different kinds of things? Alc. Different, doubtless: the proportions of an ox would not be beautiful in a horse. And we may observe also in things inanimate, that the beauty of a table, a chair, a door, consists in different proportions. Euph. Doth not this proportion imply the relation of one thing to another? Alc. It doth. Euph. And are not these relations founded in size and shape? Alc. They are. Euph. And to make the proportions just, must not those mutual relations of size and shape in the parts be such as shall make the whole complete and perfect in its kind? Alc. I grant they must. Euph. Is not a thing said to be perfect in its kind, when it answers the end for which it was made? Alc. It is. Euph. The parts, therefore, in true proportions must be so related and adjusted to one another, as that they may best conspire to the use and operation of the whole? Alc. It seems so. Euph. But the comparing parts one with another, the considering them as belonging to one whole, and the referring this whole to its use or end, should seem the work of reason; should it not? It should. Euph. Proportions therefore are not, strictly speaking, perceived by the sense of sight, but only by

Alc.

you,

reason through the means of sight. Alc. This I grant. Euph. Consequently beauty, in your sense of it, is an object, not of the eye, but of the mind. Alc. It is. Euph. The eye therefore alone cannot see, that a chair is handsome, or a door well proportioned. Alc. It seems to follow; but I am not clear as to this point. Euph. Let us see if there be any difficulty in it. Could the chair you sit be reckoned well prothink on, portioned or handsome, if it had not such a height, breadth, wideness, and was not so far reclined as to afford a convenient seat? Alc. It could not. Euph. The beauty, therefore, or symmetry of a chair, cannot be apprehended but by knowing its use, and comparing its figure with that use, which cannot be done by the eye alone, but is the effect of judgment. It is therefore, one thing to see an object, and another to discern its beauty. Alc. I admit this to be true.

Euph. The architects judge a door to be of a beautiful proportion, when its height is double of the breadth. But if you should invert a well-proportioned door, making its breadth become the height, and its height the breadth, the figure would still be the same, but without that beauty in one situation which it had in another. What can be the cause of this, but that in the forementioned supposition, the door would not yield a convenient entrance to creatures of a human figure? But if, in any other part of the universe, there should be supposed rational animals of an inverted stature, they must be supposed to invert the rule for proportion of doors; and to them that would appear beautiful which to us was disagreeable. Alc. Against this I have no objection. Euph. Tell me, Alciphron, is there not something truly decent and beautiful in dress? Alc. Doubtless, there is. Euph. Are any likelier to give us an idea of this beauty in dress than painters and sculptors, whose proper business and study it is to aim at graceful representations? Alc. I believe not. Euph. Let us then examine the draperies of the great masters in these arts: how, for instance, they use to clothe a matron or a man of rank. Cast an eye on those figures, said he, pointing to some

prints after Raphael and Guido, that hung upon the wall; what appearance, do you think, an English courtier or magistrate, with his Gothic, succinct, plaited garment, and his full-bottomed wig, or one of our ladies in her unnatural dress, pinched and stiffened and enlarged with hoops and whale-bone and buckram, must make, among those figures so decently clad in draperies that fall into such a variety of natural, easy, and ample folds, that appear with so much dignity and simplicity, that cover the body without encumbering it, and adorn without altering the shape? Alc. Truly I think they must make a very ridiculous appearance. Euph. And what do you think this proceeds from? Whence is it that the eastern nations, the Greeks, and the Romans, naturally ran into the most becoming dresses, while our Gothic gentry, after so many centuries racking their inventions, mending, and altering, and improving, and whirling about in a perpetual rotation of fashions, have never yet had the luck to stumble on any that was not absurd and ridiculous? Is it not from hence, that instead of consulting use, reason, and convenience, they abandon themselves to irregular fancy, the unnatural parent of monsters? Whereas the ancients, considering the use and end of dress, made it subservient to the freedom, ease, and convenience, of the body; and, having no notion of mending or changing the natural shape, they aimed only at shewing it with decency and advantage. And, if this be so, are we not to conclude, that the beauty of dress depends upon its subserviency to certain ends and uses? Alc. This appears to be true. Euph. This subordinate relative nature of beauty, perhaps, will be yet plainer, if we examine the respective beauties of a horse and a pillar. Virgil's description of the former is,

Illi ardua cervix,

Argutumque caput, brevis alvus, obesaque terga,
Luxuriatque toris animosum pectus.

Now I would fain know, whether the perfections and uses of a horse may not be reduced to these three points, courage, strength, and speed; and whether

I

each of the beauties enumerated doth not occasion or betoken one of these perfections? After the same manner, if we inquire into the parts and proportions of a beautiful pillar, we shall perhaps find them anwer to the same idea. Those who have considered the theory of architecture tell us, the proportions of the Grecian orders were taken from the human body, as the most beautiful and perfect production of nature. Hence were derived those graceful ideas of columns, which had a character of strength without clumsiness, or of delicacy without weakness. Those beautiful proportions were, say, taken originally from nature, which, in her creatures, as hath been already observed, referreth them to some end, use, or design. The gonfiezza also, or swelling, and the diminution of a pillar, is it not in such proportion as to make it appear strong and light at the same time? In the same manner must not the whole entablature, with its projections, be so proportioned, as to seem great but not heavy, light but not little, inasmuch as a deviation into either extreme would thwart that reason and use of things wherein their beauty is founded, and to which it is subordinate ? The entablature and all its parts and ornaments, architrave, freeze, cornice, triglyphs, metopes, modiglions, and the rest, have each a use or appearance of use, in giving firmness and union to the building, in protecting it from the weather, and casting off the rain, in representing the ends of beams with their intervals, the production of rafters, and so forth. And if we consider the graceful angles in frontispieces, the spaces between the columns, or the ornaments of their capitals, shall we not find, that their beauty riseth from the appearance of use, or the imitation of natural things, whose beauty is originally founded on the same principle? which is, indeed, the grand distinction between Grecian and Gothic architecture, the latter being fantastical, and for the most part founded neither in nature nor in reason, in necessity nor use, the appearance of which accounts for all the beauty, grace, and ornament, of the other. Cri. What Euphranor has said confirms the opinion I always en

tertained, that the rules of architecture were founded, as all other arts which flourished among the Greeks, in truth, and nature, and good sense. But the ancients, who, from a thorough consideration of the grounds and principles of art, formed their idea of beauty, did not always confine themselves strictly to the same rules and proportions: but, whenever the particular distance, position, elevation, or dimension, of the fabric or its parts seemed to require it, made no scruple to depart from them, without deserting the original principles of beauty, which governed whatever deviations they made. This latitude or licence might not, perhaps, be safely trusted with most modern architects, who in their bold sallies seem to act without aim or design, and to be governed by no idea, no reason, or principle of art, but pure caprice, joined with a thorough contempt of that noble simplicity of the ancients, without which there can be no unity, gracefulness, or grandeur, in their works; which of consequence must serve only to disfigure and dishonour the nation, being so many monuments to future ages of the opulence and ill taste of the present; which, it is to be feared, would succeed as wretchedly, and make as mad work in other affairs, were men to follow, instead of rules, precepts and models, their own taste and first thoughts of beauty. Alc. I should now, methinks, be glad to see a little more distinctly the use and tendency of this digression upon architecture. Euph. Was not beauty the very thing we inquired after? Alc. It was. Euph. What think you, Alciphron, can the appearance of a thing please at this time, and in this place, which pleased two thousand years ago, and two thousand miles off, without some real principle of beauty? Alc. It cannot. Euph. And is not this the case with respect to a just piece of architecture? Alc. Nobody denies it. Euph. Architecture, the noble offspring of judgment and fancy, was gradually formed in the most polite and knowing countries of Asia, Egypt, Greece, and Italy. It was cherished and esteemed by the most flourishing states, and most renowned princes, who with vast expense improved and brought it to perfection. It