or colouring, and to render it correspondent with the original. Taste, as exhibited in imitations, is considered as affording only a secondary kind of pleasure.

298. a. The highest efforts of taste are seen in those creations and combinations of beauty, which require the united aid of taste and imagination.

b. The most admired productions of the painter are not exact representations of objects and scenes in nature. For, in natural objects and scenes, that which is suited to excite emotions of beauty, is frequently mingled with objects of indifference or disgust. The artist, under the guidance of taste, collects together these scattered fragments of beauty, and, combining them in one view, with harmonious effect, presents to us objects and scenes more beautiful than those which can be found in nature.

c. The artist is not, however, confined to mere objects and scenes of nature for the materials of these new combinations. For, imagination enables him to call up to view, past sensations, and images of objects and scenes which exist only in his own mind. And while these scenes are flitting before him, he selects, under the guidance of taste, the most beautiful forms and happiest combinations, and fixes them on the canvas for our view. A similar process will be adopted by the Poet and Orator.

EXCITE EMOTIONS.

299. QUALITIES AND OBJECTS CALCULATED TO The qualities and objects calculated to excite emotions of beauty are numerous. The principal are such as excite pleasing emotions, either from the agreeableness and delicacy of their colour, the regularity or variety of figure, the gentleness of their motion, the possession of correct

moral and social qualities, or their fitness to some particular end.

300. The objects calculated to raise in the mind emotions of grandeur and sublimity are altogether of the serious kind, possessing a degree of awfulness and solemnity which, while they raise the mind far above its ordinary state, fill it with wonder and astonishment, which it cannot well express. Thus, Objects that are either boundless in their extent, or of amazing height or depth, are calculated to raise emotions of grandeur and sublimity. Of this kind are wide-extended plains, to which the eye can see no limits; the firmament of heaven, the boundless ocean, the awful precipice or lofty mountain, and the vast and yawning chasm. Hence, also, infinite space, endless numbers, and eternal duration, fill the mind with great ideas.

301. The combination of great power and force is calculated to raise feelings of the sublime. Hence, the grandeur of earthquakes and burning mountains, of great conflagrations, of the stormy ocean, of thunder and lightning, and of armies engaged in battle.

302. Darkness, solitude, and silence tend to raise sublime ideas. Hence, the firmament, when filled with stars, strikes the imagination with a more awful grandeur than when we view it enlightened with all the splendour of the sun.

303. The same may be said of obscurity and disorder.

Thus, the most sublime ideas are those taken from the Su

preme Being, the most unknown but the greatest of all objects. -So, a great mass of rocks, thrown together by the hand of nature, with wildness and confusion, strikes the mind with more grandeur, than if the several parts had been adjusted to one another with the most accurate symmetry.

304. a. Sublime ideas are also excited by certain great actions of men, which have required either extraordinary vigour and force of mind, heroism, magnanimity, contempt of pleasure, or contempt of death.

b. Wherever in some high and critical situation, it has been justly observed, we behold a man of uncommon intrepidity, resting upon himself, superior to passion and to fear; animated by some great principle, to the contempt of popular opinion, of selfish interest, of dangers, or of death, there we are struck with a sense of the sublime.

305. SUBLIME IN WRITING. The most striking instances of the sublime in writing occur in the Sacred Scriptures, and in the productions of the most early authors.

Thus, in the following passage in the 18th Psalm; -"In my distress I called upon the Lord, and cried unto my God: he heard my voice out of his temple, and my cry came before him, even into his ears. Then the earth shook and trembled ; the foundations also of the hills moved and were shaken, because he was wroth. He bowed the heavens, and came down ; and darkness was under his feet. He rode upon a cherub, and did fly; yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind. He made darkness his secret place; his pavilion round about him were dark waters and thick clouds of the skies."

306. a. The Sublime in writing depends, First, On a proper choice of circumstances in the

description, by which the object is exhibited in its full and most striking point of view. - A storm or tempest, for instance, is a sublime object in nature. But to render it sublime in description, it is not enough, either to give mere general expressions concerning the violence of the tempest, or to describe its ordinary effects, in overthrowing trees and houses. It must be depicted with such circumstances as fill the mind with great and awful ideas. Few, very few writers indeed, succeed in this department.

b. Secondly, On the language, which must be concise, simple, and energetic. Indeed, the main secret of being sublime, is to say great things in few and plain words.

c. All attempts at invoking the muse, or breaking forth into general, unmeaning exclamations, concerning the greatness, terribleness or majesty of the object, must be rejected as puerile.

d. The preceding rule is intended to assist the student in discriminating the characteristics of this quality of writing, when he is perusing either history, poetry, or oratory. But all juvenile efforts at sublimity of style must be altogether discouraged.

This term

307. OF THE TERM PICTURESQUE. is applied to natural scenery, when a certain harmoniousness of effect is produced on the mind, and implies such a prominence and combination of objects as give an expression or character to the scene. Picturesque scenes are generally of a limited extent.

308. OF TECHNICAL TASTE. -Technical taste is the lowest kind of criticism, and implies a partial or limited standard, drawn from some work which has been admired, and applied to decide upon the merits of some other production.

309. OF PHILOSOPHICAL TASTE. - The man of philosophical taste forms his standard not on any single human production. Truth and nature are the models which he has studied, and he has found them alike in the objects of creation around him, in the scenes of real life, and in the creations of genius. The decisions thus formed are fixed and determinate. What met the approbation of the man of philosophical taste two thousand years ago, meets the approbation of the man of philosophical taste now, and will continue to be admired to the end of time.