down by more serious qualities of mind, and thrown into the background of the picture; but where it stands out boldly and emphatically, and is evidently the master quality in any particular mind. Professed wits, though they are generally courted for the amusement they afford, are seldom respected for the qualities they possess. The habit of seeing things in a witty point of view, increases, and makes incursions from its own proper regions, upon principles and opinions which are ever held sacred by the wise and good. A witty man is a dramatic performer; in process of time, he can no more exist without applause, than he can exist without air; if his audience be small, or if they are inattentive, or if a new wit defrauds him of any portion of his admiration, it is all over with him, he sickens, and is extinguished. The applauses of the theater on which he performs are so essential to him that he must obtain them at the expense of decency, friendship, and good feeling. It must always be probable, too, that a mere wit is a person of light and frivolous understanding. His business is not to discover relations of ideas that are useful, and have a real influence upon life, but to discover the more trifling relations which are only amusing; he never looks at things with the naked eye of common sense, but is always gazing at the world through a Claude Lorraine glass, discovering a thousand appearances which are created only by the instrument of inspection, and covering every object with factitious and unnatural colors. In short, the character of a mere wit it is impossible to consider as very amiable, very respectable, or very safe. So far the world, in judging of wit where it has swallowed up all other qualities, judge aright; but I doubt if they are sufficiently indulgent to this faculty where it exists in a lesser degree, and as one out of many other ingredients of the understanding. There is an association in men's minds between dullness and wisdom, amusement and folly, which has a very powerful influence in decision upon character, and is not overcome without considerable difficulty. The reason is, that the outward signs of a dull man and a wise man are the same, and so are the outward signs of a frivolous man and a witty

man; and we are not to expect that the majority will be disposed to look to much more than the outward sign. I believe the fact to be, that wit is very seldom the only eminent quality which resides in the mind of any man; it is commonly accompanied by many other talents of every description, and ought to be considered as a strong evidence of a fertile and superior understanding. Almost all the great poets, orators, and statesmen of all times, have been witty. Cæsar, Alexander, Aristotle, Descartes, and Lord Bacon, were witty men; so were Cicero, Shakspeare, Demosthenes, Boileau, Pope, Dryden, Fontenelle, Jonson, Waller, Cowley, Solon, Socrates, Dr. Johnson, and almost every man who has made a distinguished figure in the House of Commons. I have talked of the danger of wit: I do not mean by that to enter into commonplace declamation against faculties because they are dangerous;-wit is dangerous, eloquence is dangerous, a talent for observation is dangerous, every thing is dangerous that has efficacy and vigor for its characteristics; nothing is safe but mediocrity. The business is, in conducting the understanding well, to risk something; to aim at uniting things that are commonly incompatible. The meaning of an extraordinary man is, that he is eight men, not one man; that he has as much wit as if he had no sense, and as much sense as if he had no wit; that his conduct is as judicious as if he were the dullest of human beings, and his imagination as brilliant as if he were irretrievably ruined. But when wit is combined with sense and information; when it is softened by benevolence, and restrained by strong principle; when it is in the hands of a man who can use it and despise it, who can be witty and something much better than witty, who loves honor, justice, decency, good nature, morality, and religion, ten thousand times better than wit;-wit is then a beautiful and delightful part of our nature. There is no more interesting spectacle than to see the effects of wit upon the different characters of men; than to observe it expanding caution, relaxing dignity, unfreezing coldness,-teaching age, and care, and pain, to smile,-extorting reluctant gleams of pleasure from melancholy, and charming even the pangs G

of grief. It is pleasant to observe how it penetrates through the coldness and awkwardness of society, gradually bringing men nearer together, and, like the combined force of wine and oil, giving every man a glad heart and a shining countenance. Genuine and innocent wit like this, is surely the flavor of the mind! Man could direct his ways by plain reason, and support his life by tasteless food; but God has given us wit, and flavor, and brightness, and laughter, and perfumes, to enliven the days of man's pilgrimage, and to "charm his pained steps over the burning marle.

LECTURE XII

ON TASTE.

ALL language which concerns the mind is borrowed from language which respects material objects.

The mind itself is called breath, wind, air, in almost all the languages of the world. Apprehension, comprehension, understanding, perception, are all metaphors taken from the human body, or from substance of some sort or another. The reason is plain: the attention of man is first called powerfully to outer objects; they are the first observed and the first named, they make the basis of all languages; and then, when men can turn their attention inwardly upon themselves, and want words for new ideas, they naturally borrow them from already existing language, and are determined in their choice by some fanciful analogy between the object of mind, and the object of body. This is exactly the case with taste. There are certain feelings of the mind which take place upon the perception of certain objects, or the contemplation of certain actions, which men have chosen to compare to the sensations of the palate upon the application of certain flavors. There is no reason, that I know of, why they should compare them to sensations excited by taste, rather than by smell or by touch. The feeling of beauty, excited by the view of a pleasant landscape, no more resembles any flavor which the palate can taste, than it resembles a soft and smooth object which the hand can touch: one metaphor has established itself, the other has not. We have begun, though of late years, to use the word tact; we say of such a man that he has a good tact in manners, that he has a fine tact, exactly as we would say he has a good taste. We might, in

familiar style, extend the metaphor to the sense of smelling, and say of a man that he had a good nose for the ridiculous.

Taste, then, is a metaphorical expression; and it is a mere word of classification, including several distinct feelings of the mind, exactly as the primary taste includes several distinct feelings of the body. It includes the feeling of beauty in all its very numerous meanings, the feeling of novelty, the feeling of grandeur, the feeling of sublimity, the feeling of propriety, and perhaps many others, which, in a subsequent part of my lecture, I shall take pains to enumerate.

Precisely in the same manner, the natural taste includes the taste of sweet, sour, hot, cold, moist, savory, and many others, which are so pleasantly exemplified every day in this great town; so that, when we use the word taste, we must recollect that there is no single feeling of the mind which has obtained that name, but that it is a classifying, comprehensive word, embracing a great number of distinct feelings. But why have we called all these feelings by the name of taste? and why have we denied the appellation of taste to other feelings of the mind? This is a very important question in the discussion, and I will endeavor to answer it hereafter; at present I pass it by for the sake of order and arrangement. It is very clear why we call all the various feelings of the palate by the name of taste,-simply because they originate from the same bodily organ, the palate : and this analogy has given rise to a very strange sort of language,—of the organ of taste ;-as if there were any separate quarter of the mind set apart for the generation of these feelings. All that we know about the matter, is this men have chosen to take a metaphor from the body, and apply it to the mind; they have chosen, for reasons hereafter to be conjectured, and from some remote resemblance, to class some feelings under the ap⚫pellation of taste, others not. This is the plain history of the fact; further than this, is all metaphorical fallacy; and as for any separate organ of taste, there is either no meaning to the expression, or, if there be, it is impossible to ascertain the fact which the expression implies.