exterior, now restoring their borrowed embellishments, and keeping alive, in the eye of conjugal affection, that Beauty which has long perished to every other.

The progress just remarked, in the instance of colors, admits of an easy and complete illustration, in the gradual transference of the painter's admiration, (in proportion as his taste is exercised and improved,) from the merely organical charms of his art, to its sublimer beauties. It is not that he is less delighted with beautiful coloring than before; but because his Imagination can easily supply its absence, when excellencies of a superior order engage his attention. It is for the same reason that a masterly sketch with chalk, or with a pencil, gives, to a practised eye, a pleasure to which nothing could be added by the hand of a common artist; and that the relics of ancient statuary, which are beheld with comparative indifference by the vulgar of all countries, are surveyed by men of cultivated taste with still greater rapture, than the forms which live on the glowing canvas of the painter.

Hence too it happens, that, in the progress of Taste, the word beautiful comes to be more peculiarly appropriated (at least by critics and philosophers) to Beauty in its most complicated and impressive form. In this sense we plainly understand it, when we speak of analysing beauty. To Color, and to the other simple elements which enter into its composition, although we may still, with the most unexceptionable propriety, apply this epithet, we more commonly (as far as I am able to judge) apply the epithet pleasing, or some equivalent expression.

I shall only remark farther, on this head, that, in the imitative arts, the most beautiful colors, when they are out of place, or when they do not harmonize with each other, produce an effect which is peculiarly offensive; and that in articles of dress or of furniture, a passion for gaudy decoration is justly regarded as the symptom of a taste for the Beautiful, which is destined never to pass the first stage of infancy.

See Note (X.)

CHAPTER SEVENTH.

CONTINUATION OF THE SUBJECT.-OBJECTIONS TO A THEORY OF BEAUTY PROPOSED BY FATHER BUFFIER AND SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.

BEFORE I Conclude these disquisitions concerning the influence of Association on our ideas of the Beautiful, I think it proper to take some notice of a theory upon the subject, adopted by two very eminent men, Father Buffier and Sir Joshua Reynolds, according to which we are taught, that "the effect of Beauty depends on Habit alone; the most customary form in each species of things being invariably the most beautiful."

"A beautiful nose," for example, (to borrow Mr. Smith's short, but masterly illustration of Buffier's principle,)" is one that is neither very long nor very short; neither very straight nor very crooked; but a sort of middle among all these extremes, and less different from any one of them, than all of them are from one another. It is the form which nature seems to have aimed at in them all; which, however, she deviates from in a great variety of ways, and very rarely hits exactly, but to which all these deviations still bear a very strong resemblance.In each species of creatures, what is most beautiful bears the strongest characters of the general fabric of the species, and has the strongest resemblance to the greater part of the individuals with which it is classed. Monsters, on the contrary, or what is perfectly deformed, are always most singular and odd, and have the least resemblance to the generality of that species to which they belong. And thus, the beauty of each species, though, in one sense, the rarest of all things, because few individuals hit the middle form exactly, yet in another, is the most common, because all the deviations from it resemble it more than they resemble one another."*

The same opinion has been since stated, in much

Theory of Moral Sentiments.

stronger and more explicit terms, by a still higher authority than Buffier,-Sir Joshua Reynolds.

"Every species," he observes, "of the animal as well as the vegetable creation, may be said to have a fixed or determinate form, towards which Nature is continually inclining, like various lines terminating in the centre; and, as these lines all cross the centre, though only one passes through any other point, so it will be found, that perfect beauty is oftener produced by nature than deformity: I do not mean than deformity in general, but than any one kind of deformity. To instance, in a particular part of a feature, the line that forms the ridge of the nose is beautiful when it is straight. This, then, is the central form, which is oftener found than either concave, convex, or any other irregular form that shall be proposed. As we are then more accustomed to beauty than to deformity, we may conclude that to be the reason why we approve and admire it, as we approve and admire customs and fashions of dress for no other reason than that we are used to them; so that, though habit and custom cannot be said to be the cause of beauty, it is certainly the cause of our liking it And I have no doubt, but that, if we were more used to deformity than beauty, deformity would then lose the idea now annexed to it, and take that of beauty; as if the whole world should agree, that yes and no should change their meaning; yes would then deny, and no affirm." *

As this theory has plainly taken its rise from a misconception of the manner in which the principle of Association operates, the objections to it which I have to offer, form a natural sequel to the discussions contained in the preceding chapter.

Among these objections, what strikes myself with the greatest force, is,-that, granting the theory to be just, so far as it goes, it does not at all touch the main difficulty it professes to resolve. Admitting it to be a fact, (as I very readily do, in the sense in which the proposition is explained by Reynolds,) "That in each spe

Idler, No. 82. See also Reynolds's Works by Malone, 2d Edit. p. 237.

cies of things, the most customary form is the most beautiful;" and supposing, for the sake of argument, that this fact warranted the very illogical inference, "That the effect of Beauty in that species depends on habit alone;" the question still remains to be answered; on what principle do we pronounce the Beauty of one species to be greater than that of another? To satisfy the conditions of the problem, it is obviously necessary, not only to show how one Rose comes to be considered as more beautiful than another Rose; one Peacock as more beautiful than another Peacock; one Woman as more beautiful than another Woman; but to explain why the Rose is pronounced to be more beautiful than the Dandelion, the Peacock more beautiful than the Stork, and a Beautiful Woman to be the masterpiece of Nature's handywork. To such questions as these, the theory of Reynolds does not furnish even the shadow of a reply.

This, however, is not the only objection to which it is liable. When applied to account for the comparative Beauty of different things of the same kind, it will be found altogether unsatisfactory and erroneous.

In proof of this assertion, it is almost sufficient to mention the consequence to which it obviously and necessarily leads, according to the acknowledgment of its ingenious authors;-That no individual object is fitted to give pleasure to the spectator, previous to a course of comparative observations on a number of other objects of the same kind. It will afterwards appear, that, in adopting this idea, Buffier and Reynolds have confounded the principle of Taste (which is an acquired power, implying comparison and reflection) with our natural susceptibility of the pleasing effect which Beauty produces. In the mean time, it is of more importance to remark, that neither of these writers has attempted to assign any reason why a pleasing effect should be connected with those qualities which are most commonly to be observed in Nature; and therefore, granting that the general fact corresponds with their statement, it remains to be considered, whether particular objects are perceived to be Beautiful, in con

sequence of their coincidence with those arrangements at which Nature appears to aim; or whether our perception of this coincidence be not a subsequent discovery, founded on a comparison of her productions with some notions of Beauty previously formed. To say, with Reynolds, that "we approve and admire Beauty because we are more accustomed to it than Deformity; as we approve and admire customs and fashions of dress, for no other reason than that we are used to them," is manifestly an imperfect solution of the difficulty. Even in the article of dress, it is not custom alone, but the example of those whom we look up to as patterns worthy of imitation;-that is, it is not the custom of the many, but the fashion of the few, which has the chief influence on our judgments; and consequently admitting (what I am by no means disposed to yield) that one mode of dress is, in itself, as beautiful as another, this concession would only afford an additional illustration of the power of the associating principle, without proving any thing in favor of that conclusion which Reynolds wishes to establish.

Nor is the instance of monstrous animal productions, appealed to by Buffier, more in point. The disgust which they excite, seems to arise principally from some idea of pain or suffering connected with their existence; or from the obvious unfitness of the structure of the individual for the destined purposes of his species. No similar emotion is excited by an analogous appearance in the vegetable, or in the mineral kingdoms; or even by those phenomena which contradict the uniform tenor of our past experience, with respect to Nature's most obvious and familiar laws. What occurrence so constantly presented to our senses as the fall of heavy bodies! yet nobody ever thought of applying to it the epithet beautiful. The rise of a column of smoke is a comparative rarity; and yet how often has it amused the eye of the infant, of the painter, of the poet, and of the philosopher!-Although the human form be necessarily fixed by its own gravity, to the surface of this globe, how beautiful are those pictures of ancient poetry, in which the Gods are represented as transporting