5

Those stars, that glide behind them or between,
Now sparkling, now bedimm'd, but always seen;
Yon crescent moon, that seems as if it grew
In its own starless, cloudless lake of blue-
I see them all, so excellently fair!

I see, not feel, how beautiful they are."

S. T. C. MS. Poem.

SCHOLIUM. We have sufficiently distinguished the beautiful from the agreeable, by the sure criterion, that, when we find an object agreeable, the sensation of pleasure always 10 precedes the judgement, and is its determining cause. We find it agreeable. But when we declare an object beautiful, the contemplation or intuition of its beauty precedes the feeling of complacency, in order of nature at least: nay, in great depression of spirits may even exist without sensibly 15 producing it.—

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"A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear!
A stifled, drowsy, unimpassion'd grief,

That finds no natural outlet, no relief

In word, or sigh, or tear!

O dearest lady! in this heartless mood,

To other thoughts by yon sweet throstle woo'd!
All this long eve, so balmy and serene,
Have I been gazing at the western sky."

Now the least reflection convinces us that our sensations, 25 whether of pleasure or of pain, are the incommunicable parts of our nature; such as can be reduced to no universal rule; and in which therefore we have no right to expect that others should agree with us, or to blame them for disagreement. That the Greenlander prefers train oil to olive 30 oil, and even to wine, we explain at once by our knowledge of the climate and productions to which he has been habituated. Were the man as enlightened as Plato, his palate would still find that most agreeable to which it had been most accustomed. But when the Iroquois Sachem, 35 after having been led to the most perfect specimens of

architecture in Paris, said that he saw nothing so beautiful as the cook's shops, we attribute this without hesitation to savagery of intellect, and infer with certainty that the sense of the beautiful was either altogether dormant in his mind, or at best very imperfect. The Beautiful, therefore, not 5 originating in the sensations, must belong to the intellect : and therefore we declare an object beautiful, and feel an inward right to expect that others should coincide with us. But we feel no right to demand it: and this leads us to that, which hitherto we have barely touched upon, and which we 10 shall now attempt to illustrate more fully, namely, to the distinction of the Beautiful from the Good.

Let us suppose Milton in company with some stern and prejudiced Puritan, contemplating the front of York Cathedral, and at length expressing his admiration of its beauty. 15 We will suppose it too at that time of his life, when his religious opinions, feelings, and prejudices most nearly coincided with those of the rigid Anti-prelatists.-P. Beauty; I am sure, it is not the beauty of holiness. M. True; but yet it is beautiful.-P. It delights not me. a0 What is it good for? Is it of any use but to be stared at ? -M. Perhaps not! but still it is beautiful.-P. But call to mind the pride and wanton vanity of those cruel shavelings, that wasted the labor and substance of so many thousand poor creatures in the erection of this haughty pile. 25 -M. I do. But still it is very beautiful.-P. Think how many score of places of worship, incomparably better suited both for prayer and preaching, and how many faithful ministers might have been maintained, to the blessing of tens of thousands, to them and their children's children, 30 with the treasures lavished on this worthless mass of stone and cement.-M. Too true! but nevertheless it is very beautiful.-P. And it is not merely useless; but it feeds the pride of the prelates, and keeps alive the popish and carnal spirit among the people.-M. Even so! and I pre- 35

sume not to question the wisdom, nor detract from the pious zeal, of the first Reformers of Scotland, who for these reasons destroyed so many fabrics, scarce inferior in beauty to this now before our eyes. But I did not call it good, nor 5 have I told thee, brother! that if this were levelled with the ground, and existed only in the works of the modeller or engraver, that I should desire to reconstruct it. The GOOD consists in the congruity of a thing with the laws of the reason and the nature of the will, and in its fitness to Io determine the latter to actualize the former: and it is always discursive. The Beautiful arises from the perceived harmony of an object, whether sight or sound, with the inborn and constitutive rules of the judgement and imagination and it is always intuitive. As light to the eye, even 15 such is beauty to the mind, which cannot but have complacency in whatever is perceived as pre-configured to its living faculties. Hence the Greeks called a beautiful object καλόν quasi καλοῦν, i. e. calling on the soul, which receives instantly, and welcomes it as something connatural. Πάλιν 20 οὖν ἀναλαβόντες, λέγωμεν τί δῆτα ἐστὶ τὸ ἐν τοῖς σώμασι καλόν. Πρῶτον ἔστι μὲν γάρ τι καὶ βολῇ τῇ πρώτῃ αἰσθητὸν γινόμενον, καὶ ἡ ψυχὴ ὥσπερ συνεῖσα λέγει, καὶ ἐπιγνοῦσα ἀποδέχεται, καὶ οἷον συναρμόττεται. Πρὸς δὲ τὸ αἰσχρὸν προσβαλοῦσα ἀνίλλεται, καὶ ἀρνεῖται καὶ ἀνανεύει ἐπ ̓ αὐτοῦ οὐ συμφωνοῦσα, καὶ ἀλλοτριουμένη. 25 PLOTIN: Ennead. I. Lib. 6.

APPENDIX

"He, (Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk) knowing that learning hath no enemy but ignorance, did suspect always the want of it in those men who derided the habit of it in others, like the fox in the fable, who being, by mischance or degeneracy, without a tail, persuaded others to cut theirs off as a burden. But he liked well the philosopher's division of men into three ranks; some who knew good and were willing to teach others.— These he said, were like gods among men; others who though they knew not much, yet were willing to learn and thankful for instruction.-These, he said, were like men among beasts; and some who knew not truth or good, and yet despised and maligned such as would teach them.-These he esteemed as beasts among men."-Lloyd's State Worthies, p. 33.

THUS, then, let us at once sum up and exemplify the whole. Its ambrosial odour renders the rose more agreeable to us, but it is not by this addition, that nature wrests the palm of beauty from the flower-pieces of Van Huysun. The patience, strength, and laboriousness of the Ox and 5 the Ass, invaluable as we rightly deem them, can yet by no influence of association, bribe us to compare them in charm of form, and disposition of colors, with the fierce and untamable Zebra. The rough Sheep-dog is almost indispensable to the civilization of the human race. He appears 10 to possess not Valuableness only, but even Worth! His various moral qualities, which seem above the effects of mere Instinct devoid of Will, compel our respect and regard, and excite our gratitude to him, as well as for him. Yet neither his paramount utility, no, nor even his incorruptible 15 fidelity and disinterested affection, enable us to equal him, in outward beauty, with the cruel and cowardly panther, or leopard, or tiger, the hate and horror of the flock and of the shepherd.

But may not the sense of Beauty originate in our per- 20 ception of the fitness of the means to the end in and for the

animal itself? Or may it not depend on a law of Proportion? No! The shell of the Oyster, rough and unshapely, is its habitation and strong hold, its defence and organ of locomotion: the pearl, the beautiful ornament of the beau* tiful, is its disease. How charming the Moss Rose with its luxuriancy of petals! That moss, that luxuriancy, are the effects of degeneracy, and unfit the flower for the multiplication of its kind. Disproportion indeed may in certain cases preclude the sense of Beauty, and will do so wherever 10 it destroys or greatly disturbs the wholeness and simultaneousness of the impression. But still proportion is not the positive cause, or the universal and necessary condition of beauty, were it only that proportion implies the perception of the coincidence of quantities with a pre-established 15 rule of measurement, and is therefore always accompanied with an act of discursive thought. We declare at first sight the Swan beautiful, as it floats on with its long arching neck and protruding breast, which uniting to their reflected image in the watery mirror, present to our delighted eye the 20 stringless bow of dazzling silver, which the Poets and Painters assign to the God of Love. We ask not what proportion the neck bears to the body; -through all the changes of graceful motion it brings itself into unity, as an harmonious part of an harmonious whole. The very word "part 25 imperfectly conveys what we see and feel; for the moment we look at it in division, the charm ceases. In this spirit the Lover describing the incidents of a walk on the riverbanks by moonlight is made by the poet to exclaim :

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35

"The pairing swans have heard my tread,
And rustle from their reedy bed.

O beauteous birds! methinks ye measure
Your movements to some heavenly tune!

O beauteous birds! 'tis such a pleasure
To see you move beneath the moon,

I would it were your true delight
To rest by day and wake all night."

"