and its effect on the organ, continue exactly of a youthful face, to the richly fretted and the same. This therefore, is an instance in variegated countenance of a pimpled drunk which sublimity is distinctly proved to con- ard! sist, not in any physical quality of the object to which it is ascribed, but in its necessary connection with that vast and uncontrolled Power which is the natural object of awe and veneration.

Such, we conceive, would be the inevita ble effect of dissolving the subsisting connection between the animating ideas of hope and enjoyment, and those visible appearances which are now significant of those emotions, and derive their whole beauty from that signification. But the effect would be still stronger, if we could suppose the moral expression of those appearances to be reversed in the same manner. If the smile, which now enchants us, as the expression of innocence and affection, were the sign attached by nature to guilt and malignity—if the blush which expresses delicacy, and the glance that speaks intelligence, vivacity, and softness, had always been found united with brutal passion or idiot moodiness; is it not certain, that the whole of their beauty would be extinguished, and that our emotions from the sight of them would be exactly the reverse of what they now are?

That the beauty of a living and sentient creature should depend, in a great degree, upon qualities peculiar to such a creature, rather than upon the mere physical attributes which it may possess in common with the inert matter around it, cannot indeed appear a very improbable supposition to any one. But it may be more difficult for some persons to understand how the beauty of mere dead matter should be derived from the feelings and sympathies of sentient beings. It is ab solutely necessary, therefore, that we should give an instance or two of this derivation also.

We may now take an example a little less plain and elementary. The most beautiful object in nature, perhaps, is the countenance of a young and beautiful woman;-and we are apt at first to imagine, that, independent of all associations, the form and colours which it displays are, in themselves, lovely and engaging; and would appear charming to all beholders, with whatever other qualities or impressions they might happen to be connected. A very little reflection, however, will probally be sufficient to convince us of the fallacy of this impression; and to satisfy us, that what we admire is not a combination of forms and colours, (which could never excite any mental emotion,) but a collection of signs and tokens of certain mental feelings and affections, which are universally recognised as the proper objects of love and sympathy. Laying aside the emotions arising from difference of sex, and supposing female beauty to be contemplated by the pure and unenvying eye of a female, it seems quite obvious, that, among its ingredients, we should trace the signs of two different sets of qualities, that are neither of them the object of sight, but of a far higher faculty;-in the first place, of youth and health; and in the second place, of innocence, gaiety, sensibility, intelligence, delicacy or vivacity. Now, without enlarging upon the natural effect of these It is easy enough to understand how the suggestions, we shall just suppose that the sight of a picture or statue should affect us appearances, which must be admitted at nearly in the same way as the sight of the all events to be actually significant of the original: nor is it much more difficult to con qualities we have enumerated, had been by ceive, how the sight of a cottage should give the law of nature attached to the very oppo- us something of the same feeling as the sight site qualities;—that the smooth forehead, the of a peasant's family; and the aspect of a town firm cheek, and the full lip, which are now raise many of the same ideas as the appearso distinctly expressive to us of the gay and ance of a multitude of persons. We may vigorous periods of youth-and the clear and begin, therefore, with an example a little blooming complexion, which indicates health more complicated. Take, for instance, the and activity, had been in fact the forms and case of a common English landscape-green colours by which old age and sickness were meadows with grazing and ruminating cattle characterised; and that, instead of being found-canals or navigable rivers-well fenced, united to those sources and seasons of enjoyment, they had been the badges by which nature pointed out that state of suffering and decay which is now signified to us by the vid and emaciated face of sickness, or the wrinkled front, the quivering lip, and hollow cheek of age;-If this were the familiar law of our nature, can it be doubted that we should look upon these appearances, not with rapture, but with aversion-and consider it as absolutely ludicrous or disgusting, to speak of the beauty of what was interpreted by every one as the lamented sign of pain and decrepitude? Mr Knight himself, though a firm believer in the intrinsic beauty of colours, is so much of this opinion, that he thinks it entirely owing to those associations that we prefer the tame smoothness, and comparatively poor colours

well cultivated fields-neat, clean, scattered cottages-humble antique churches, with church-yard elms, and crossing hedgerows-all seen under bright skies, and in good wea ther:-There is much beauty, as every one will acknowledge, in such a scene. But in what does the beauty consist? Not certainly in the mere mixture of colours and forms; for colours more pleasing, and lines more graceful, (according to any theory of grace that may be preferred,) might be spread upon a board, or a painter's pallet, without engaging the eye to a second glance, or raising the least emotion in the mind; but in the picture of human happiness that is presented to our imaginations and affections in the visible and unequivocal signs of comfort, and cheer. ful and peaceful enjoyment—and of that se

care and successful industry that ensures its continuance and of the piety by which it is exalted-and of the simplicity by which it is contrasted with the guilt and the fever of a city hile;-in the images of health and temperance and plenty which it exhibits to every eye-and in the glimpses which it affords to warmer imaginations, of those primitive or tabulous times, when man was uncorrupted by luxury and ambition, and of those humble retreats in which we still delight to imagine that love and philosophy may find an unpolluted asylum. At all events, however, it is human feeling that excites our sympathy, and forms the true object of our emotions. It is man, and man alone, that we see in the beauties of the earth which he inhabits;-or, if a more sensitive and extended sympathy connect us with the lower families of animated tature, and make us rejoice with the lambs that bleat on the uplands, or the cattle that repose in the valley, or even with the living plants that drink the bright sun and the balmy air beside them, it is still the idea of etpayment of feelings that animate the existence of sentient beings-that calls forth all our emotions, and is the parent of all the beauty with which we proceed to invest the Inanimate creation around us.

with the monuments of ancient magnificenco and extinguished hostility-the feuds, and the combats, and the triumphs of its wild and primitive inhabitants, contrasted with the stillness and desolation of the scenes where they lie interred;-and the romantic ideas attached to their ancient traditions, and the peculiarities of the actual life of their des cendants-their wild and enthusiastic poetry\ their gloomy superstitions—their attachment to their chiefs-the dangers, and the hardships and enjoyments of their lonely huntings and fishings-their pastoral shielings on the mountains in summer-and the tales and the sports that amuse the little groups that are frozen into their vast and trackless valleys in the winter. Add to all this, the traces of vast and obscure antiquity that are impressed on the language and the habits of the people, and on the cliffs, and caves, and gulfy torrents of the land; and the solemn and touching reflection, perpetually recurring, of the weakness and insignificance of perishable man, whose generations thus pass away into oblivion, with all their toils and ambi tion; while nature holds on her unvarying course, and pours out her streams, and renews her forests, with undecaying activity, regardless of the fate of her proud and perish able sovereign.

Instead of this quiet and tame English landscape, let us now take a Welch or a We have said enough, we believe, to let Highland scene; and see whether its beau- our readers understand what we mean by ties will admit of being explained on the external objects being the natural signs or same principle. Here, we shall have lofty concomitants of human sympathies or emo ountains, and rocky and lonely recesses- tions. Yet we cannot refrain from adding tuted woods hung over precipices-lakes one other illustration, and asking on what intersected with castled promontories-am- other principle we can account for the beauty ple solitudes of unploughed and untrodden of Spring? Winter has shades as deep, and Talleys-nameless and gigantic ruins-and colours as brilliant; and the great forms of mountain echoes repeating the scream of the nature are substantially the same through all eagle and the roar of the cataract. This, the revolutions of the year. We shall seek to, is beautiful;-and, to those who can in vain, therefore, in the accidents of mere interpret the language it speaks, far more organic matter, for the sources of that "verbeautiful than the prosperous scene with nal delight and joy," which subject all finer which we have contrasted it. Yet, lonely as spirits to an annual intoxication, and strike it is, it is to the recollection of man and the home the sense of beauty even to hearts that gestion of human feelings that its beauty seem proof against it under all other aspects. also is owing. The mere forms and colours And it is not among the Dead but among the that compose its visible appearance, are no Living, that this beauty originates. It is the more capable of exciting any emotion in the renovation of life and of joy to all animated mind, than the forms and colours of a Turkey beings, that constitutes this great jubilee of carpet. It is sympathy with the present or nature;-the young of animals bursting into the past, or the imaginary inhabitants of such existence-the simple and universal pleasures region, that alone gives it either interest or which are diffused by the mere temperature beauty; and the delight of those who behold of the air, and the profusion of sustenanceit, will always be found to be in exact pro- the pairing of birds-the cheerful resumption portion to the force of their imaginations, and of rustic toils-the great alleviation of all the the warmth of their social affections. The miseries of poverty and sickness-our symleading impressions, here, are those of ro- pathy with the young life, and the promise mantic seclusion, and primeval simplicity; and the hazards of the vegetable creation-lovers sequestered in these blissful solitudes, the solemn, yet cheering, impression of the "from towns and toils remote," and rustic constancy of nature to her great periods of poets and philosophers communing with na-renovation-and the hopes that dart spontature, and at a distance from the low pursuits neously forward into the new circle of exerand selfish malignity of ordinary mortals;-tions and enjoyments that is opened up by her then there is the sublime impression of the hand and her example. Such are some of Mighty Power which piled the massive cliffs the conceptions that are forced upon us by upon each other, and rent the mountains the appearances of returning spring; and that neder, and scattered their giant fragments seem to account for the emotions of delight at their base; and all the images connected with which these appearances are hailed, by

every mind endowed with any degree of sen- sympathies or emotions, and external objects, sibility, somewhat better than the brightness may be either such as occur to whole classe of the colours, or the agreeableness of the of men, or are confined to particular indismells that are then presented to our senses. viduals. Among the former, those that ap They are kindred conceptions that consti-ply to different nations or races of men, are tute all the beauty of childhood. The forms the most important and remarkable; and co and colours that are peculiar to that age, are stitute the basis of those peculiarities by not necessarily or absolutely beautiful in which national tastes are distinguished.themselves; for, in a grown person, the same Take again, for example, the instance of fe forms and colours would be either ludicrous male beauty-and think what different and or disgusting. It is their indestructible con- inconsistent standards would be fixed for it nection with the engaging ideas of innocence in the different regions of the world;-in -of careless gaiety-of unsuspecting confi- Africa, in Asia, and in Europe;-in Tartary dence;-made still more tender and attract- and in Greece; in Lapland, Patagonia, and ive by the recollection of helplessness, and Circassia. If there was any thing absolutely blameless and happy ignorance-of the anx or intrinsically beautiful, in any of the forms ious affection that watches over all their ways thus distinguished, it is inconceivable that -and of the hopes and fears that seek to men should differ so outrageously in their pierce futurity, for those who have neither conceptions of it: if beauty were a real and fears nor cares nor anxieties for themselves. independent quality, it seems impossible that These few illustrations will probably be it should be distinctly and clearly felt by one sufficient to give our readers a general con- set of persons, where another set, altogether ception of the character and the grounds of as sensitive, could see nothing but its oppothat theory of beauty which we think affords site; and if it were actually and inseparably the only true or consistent account of its na-attached to certain forms, colours, or propor ture. They are all examples, it will be observed, of the First and most important connection which we think may be shown to exist between external objects and the sentiments or emotions of the mind; or cases, in which the visible phenomena are the natural and universal accompaniments of the emotion, and are consequently capable of reviving that emotion, in some degree, in the breast of every beholder. If the tenor of those illustrations has been such as to make any impression in favour of the general theory, we conceive that it must be very greatly confirmed by the slightest consideration of the Second class of cases, or those in which the external object is not the natural and necessary, but only the occasional or accidental concomitant of the emotion which it recals. In the former instances, some conception of beauty seems to be inseparable from the appearance of the objects; and being impressed, in some degree, upon all persons to whom they are presented, there is evidently room for insinuating that it is an independent and intrinsic quality of their nature, and does not arise from association with any thing else. In the instances, however, to which we are now to allude, this perception of beauty is not universal, but entirely dependent upon the opportunities which each individual has had to associate ideas of emotion with the object to which it is ascribed:-the same thing appearing beautiful to those who have been exposed to the influence of such associations, and indifferent to those who have not. Sch instances, therefore, really afford an experimentum crucis as to the truth of the theory in question; nor is it easy to conceive any more complete evidence, both that there is no such thing as absolute or intrinsic beauty, and that it depends altogether on those associations with which it is thus found to come and to disappear.

tions, it must appear utterly inexplicable that it should be felt and perceived in the most opposite forms and proportion, in objects of the same description. On the other hand, if all beauty consist in reminding us of certain natural sympathies and objects of emotion, with which they have been habitually connected, it is easy to perceive how the most different forms should be felt to be equally beautiful. If female beauty, for instance, consist in the visible signs and expressions of youth and health, and of gentleness, vi vacity, and kindness; then it will necessarily happen, that the forms, and colours and proportions which nature may have connected with those qualities, in the different climates or regions of the world, will all appear equally beautiful to those who have been accustomed to recognise them as the signs of such quali ties; while they will be respectively indif ferent to those who have not learned to interpret them in this sense, and displeasing to those whom experience has led to consider them as the signs of opposite qualities.

The case is the same, though, perhaps to a scaller degree, as to the peculiarity of national taste in other particulars. The style of dress and architecture in every nation, if not adopted from mere want of skill, or penury of mate rials, always appears beautiful to the natives, and somewhat monstrous and absurd to foreigners; and the general character and aspect of their landscape, in like manner, if not associated with substantial evils and inconveniences, always appears more beautiful and enchanting than the scenery of any other region. The fact is still more striking, perhaps, in the case of music;-in the effects of those national airs, with which even the most uncultivated imaginations have connected so many interesting recollections; and in the delight with which all persons of sensibility catch the strains of their native melodies in The accidental or arbitrary relations that strange or in distant lands. It is owing chiefly may thus be established between natural to the same sort of arbitrary and national as

ociation, that white is thought a gay colour history of this great people, open at once be Europe, where it is used at weddings- fore his imagination, and present him with a and a dismal colour in China, where it is used for mouming;-that we think yew-trees goomy, because they are planted in churchyards and large masses of powdered horsehar maiestic, because we see them on the hals of judges and bishops.

field of high and solemn imagery, which can never be exhausted. Take from him these associations conceal from him that it is Rome that he sees, and how different would be his emotion!"

The influences of the same studies may be Next to those curious instances of arbitrary traced, indeed, through almost all our impresor limited associations that are exemplified in sions of beauty-and especially in the feelings the diversities of national taste, are those that which we receive from the contemplation of are produced by the differences of instruction rural scenery; where the images and recol or education. If external objects were sublime lections which have been associated with such and beautiful in themselves, it is plain, that objects, in the enchanting strains of the poets, they would appear equally so to those who are perpetually recalled by their appearance, were acquainted with their origin, and to those and give an interest and a beauty to the prosto whom it was unknown. Yet it is not easy, pect, of which the uninstructed cannot have perhaps, to calculate the degree to which our the slightest perception. Upon this subject, notions of beauty and sublimity are now influ- also, Mr. Alison has expressed himself with erced, over all Europe, by the study of clas- his usual warmth and elegance. After obsical literature; or the number of impressions serving, that, in childhood, the beauties of of this sort which the well-educated conse- nature have scarcely any existence for those quently receive, from objects that are utterly who have as yet but little general sympathy Tifferent to uninstructed persons of the same with mankind, he proceeds to state, that they natural sensibility. We gladly avail ourselves, are usually first recommended to notice by upon this subject, of the beautiful expressions the poets, to whom we are introduced in the af Mr. Alison. course of education; and who, in a manner, create them for us, by the associations which they enable us to form with their visible apearance.

"The delight which most men of education receive from the consideration of antiquity, and the beauty that they discover in every object which is connected with ancient times, , in a great measure, to be ascribed to the same cause. The antiquarian, in his cabinet, Surrounded by the relics of former ages, seems to himself to be removed to periods that are long since past, and indulges in the imaginatoon of living in a world, which, by a very atural kind of prejudice, we are always wilLog to believe was both wiser and better than the present. All that is venerable or laudable the history of these times, present themelves to his memory. The gallantry, the heroism, the patriotism of antiquity, rise again efore his view, softened by the obscurity in tch they are involved, and rendered more educing to the imagination by that obscurity aselt, which, while it mingles a sentiment of regret and his pursuits, serves at the same une to stimulate his fancy to fill up, by its own cration, those long intervals of time of which lustory has preserved no record.

And what is it that constitutes that emotion of sublime delight, which every man of common sensibility feels upon the first prospect of Bome? It is not the scene of destruction which is before ham. It is not the Tiber, diminished in his imagination to a paltry stream, flowing amid the ruins of that magnificence which it unce adored. It is not the triumph of superstition over the wreck of human greatness, and its monuments erected upon the very pit where the first honours of humanity have been gained. It is ancient Rome which fills his imagination. It is the country of Cæsar, and Cicero, and Virgil, which is before him. It is the Mistress of the world which he sees, and who seems to him to rise again from her tomb, to give laws to the universe. All that he labours of his youth, or the studies of his naturer age have acquired, with regard to the

"How different, from this period, become the sentiments with which the scenery of nature is contemplated, by those who have any imagination! The beautiful forms of ancient mythology, with which the fancy of poets peopled every element, are now ready to appear to their minds, upon the prospect of every scene. The descriptions of ancient authors, so long admired, and so deserving of admiration, occur to them at every moment, and with them, all those enthusiastic ideas of ancient genius and glory, which the study of so many years of youth so naturally leads them to form. Or, if the study of modern poetry has succeeded to that of the ancient, a thousand other beautiful associations are acquired, which, instead of destroying, serve easily to unite with the former, and to afford a new source of delight. The awful forms of Gothic superstition, the wild and romantic imagery, which the turbulence of the middle ages, the Crusades, and the institution of chivalry have spread over every country of Europe, arise to the imagination in every scene; accompanied with all those pleasing recollections of prowess, and adventure, and courteous manners, which distinguished those memorable times. With such images in their minds, it is not common nature that appears to surround them. It is nature embellished and made sacred by the memory of Theocritus and Virgil, and Milton and Tasso; their genius seems still to linger among the scenes which inspired it, and to irradiate every object where it dwells; and the creation of their fancy seem the fit inhabitants of that nature, which their descriptions have clothed with beauty."

It is needless, for the purpose of mere illus. tration, to pursue this subject of arbitrary or

Rccidental association through all the divisions and that the forms, and colours, and materiaus of which it is susceptible; and, indeed, the that are, we may say, universally and very task would be endless; since there is scarcely strongly felt to be beautiful while they are any class in society which may not be shown in fashion, are sure to lose all their beauty as to have peculiar associations of interest and soon as the fashion has passed away. Now emotion with objects which are not so con- the forms, and colours, and combinations nected in the minds of any other class. The young and the old-the rich and the poor the artist and the man of science-the in habitant of the city and the inhabitant of the country-the man of business and the man of pleasure-the domestic and the dissipated, nay, even the followers of almost every different study or profession, have perceptions of beauty, because they have associations with external objects, which are peculiar to themselves, and have no existence for any other persons. But, though the detail of such instances could not fail to show, in the clearest and most convincing manner, how directly the notion of beauty is derived from some more radical and familiar emotion, and how many and various are the channels by which such emotions are transmitted, enough, perhaps, has been already said, to put our readers in possession of the principles and general bearings of an argument which we must not think of exhausting.

main exactly as they were; and, therefore it seems indisputable, that the source of their successive beauty and ugliness must be sought in something extrinsic, and can only be found in the associations which once exalted, and ultimately degraded them in our estimation. While they were in fashion, they were the forms and colours which distinguished the rich and the noble-the eminent, the envied, the observed in society. They were the forms and the colours in which all that was beautiful, and admired, and exalted, were habitually arrayed. They were associated, therefore, with ideas of opulence, and elegance, and gaiety, and all that is captivating and bewitching, in manners, fortune, and situation-and derived the whole of their beauty from those associations. By and bye, however, they were deserted by the beautiful, the rich, and the elegant, and descended to the vulgar and dependent, or were only seen in combination with the antiquated airs of faded beauties or obsolete beaux. They thus came to be associated with ideas of vulgarity and derision, and with the images of old and decayed per sons, whom it is difficult for their juniors to believe ever to have been young or attractive;

and the associations being thus reversed, in which all their beauty consisted, the beauty itself naturally disappeared.

Before entirely leaving this branch of the subject, however, let us pause for a moment on the familiar but very striking and decisive instance of our varying and contradictory judgments, as to the beauty of the successive fashions of dress that have existed within our own remembrance. All persons who still continue to find amusement in society, and are not old enough to enjoy only the recollec- The operation of the same causes is distions of their youth, think the prevailing tinctly visible in all the other apparent irreg fashions becoming and graceful, and the ularities of our judgments as to this descripfashions of twenty or twenty-five years old tion of beauty. Old people have in general intolerably ugly and ridiculous. The younger but little toleration for the obsolete fashions they are, and the more they mix in society, of their later or middle years; but will gene this impression is the stronger; and the fact rally stickle for the intrinsic elegance of those is worth noticing; because there is really no which were prevalent in the bright days of one thing as to which persons judging merely their early youth-as being still associated from their feelings, and therefore less likely in their recollections, with the beauty with to be misled by any systems or theories, are which they were first enchanted, and the gay so very positive and decided, as that estab- spirits with which they were then inspired. lished fashions are beautiful in themselves; In the same way, while we laugh at the fashand that exploded fashions are intrinsically ions of which fine ladies and gentlemen were and beyond all question preposterous and proud in the days of our childhood, because ugly. We have never yet met a young lady they are now associated only with images of or gentleman, who spoke from their hearts decrepitude and decay, we look with some and without reserve, who had the least doubt feelings of veneration on the habits of more on the subject; or could conceive how any remote generations, the individuals of which person could be so stupid as not to see the are only known to us as historical persons; intrinsic elegance of the reigning mode, or and with unmingled respect and admiration not to be struck with the ludicrous awkward-on those still more ancient habiliments which ness of the habits in which their mothers remind us either of the heroism of the feudal were disguised. Yet there can be no doubt, chivalry, or the virtue and nobleness of clas that if these ingenuous critics had been born, sical antiquity. The iron mail of the Gothic with the same natural sensibility to beauty, knight, or the clumsy shield and naked arms but twenty years earlier, they would have of the Roman warrior, strike us as majestic joined in admiring what they now laugh at; and graceful, merely because they are asso as certainly as those who succeed them twenty ciated with nothing but tales of romantic dar years hereafter will laugh at them. It is plain, ing or patriotic prowess-while the full-bot then, and we think scarcely disputed, out of tomed periwigs that were added to the soi the circles to which we have alluded, that dier's equipment in the days of Lewis XIV there is, in the general case, no intrinsic and King William-and no doubt had a no Seauty or deformity in any of those fashions; I ble effect in the eyes of that generation