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"otherwise."* This is true enough, but it is not to the purpose. I admit readily, that a fortuitous connection of thought can make it otherwise than sublime; but the question is, Did it receive from nature the character of sublime? does any thing receive from nature the character of sublime, or the character of beautiful? and would any thing perpetually display, and constantly preserve, such character, if no accident intervened to raise up a contrary association? Certainty on such subjects cannot be attained; but I, for one, strongly believe in the affirmative of the question, that Nature speaks to the mind of man immediately in beautiful and sublime language; that she astonishes him with magnitude, appals him with darkness, cheers him with splendour, soothes him with harmony, captivates him with emotion, enchants him with fame; she never intended man should walk among her flowers, and her fields, and her streams, unmoved; nor did she rear the strength of the hills in vain, or mean that we should look with a stupid heart on the wild glory of the torrent, bursting from the darkness of the forest, and dashing over the crumbling rock. I would as soon deny hardness, or softness, or figure, to be qualities of matter, as I would deny beauty or sublimity to belong to its qualities.

Every man is as good a judge of a question like this, as the ablest metaphysician. Walk in the fields in one of the mornings of May, and if you carry with you a mind unpolluted with harm, watch how it is impressed. You are delighted with the beauty of colours; are not those colours beautiful? You breathe vegetable fragrance; is not that fragrance grateful? You see the sun rising from behind a mountain, and the heavens painted with light; is not that renewal of the light of the morning sublime? You reject all obvious reasons, and

* Alison on Taste, p. 139.

say that these things are beautiful and sublime because the accidents of life have made them so;-I say they are beautiful and sublime, BECAUSE GOD HAS MADE THEM so! that it is the original, indelible character impressed upon them by Him, who has opened these sources of simple pleasure, to calm, perhaps, the perturbations of sense, and to make us love that joy which is purchased without giving pain to another man's heart, and without entailing reproach upon our own.

There is one other question, before I conclude this subject, on which I wish to say something; a question like a German chancery suit, which is handed down from father to son as a matter of course, and the decision of which no man ever dreams of as a possible event. Some late traveller in Germany speaks of a suit in the imperial chamber of Wetzlar, which had been pending 170 years. The cause came on for a first hearing as he passed through the country; the result he did not hear, as the Teutonic Master of the Rolls took time to consider. In the same manner, the world is always taking time to consider about the standard of taste. Is there any standard of taste, and what is it? This is the question that has been discussed and re-discussed from time immemorial, and in which question I suppose I have little to add to those who have so often handled it before me. As I have before said, taste is a general term for a great number of distinct feelings: if there be no standard for approbation and disapprobation in these feelings, which are the constituent elements of taste, there is no standard for taste; but if a good and a bad can be asserted of these feelings with any degree of certainty, then there is a standard of taste. Let us try it in one of the departments of taste, the beautiful; and then the question will be, is there any standard of the beautiful? Now, if a delirious virtuoso were to purchase one of those sign-paintings in which King Charles the Second, seated on the oak-tree,

announces the dispensation of beer and other uncourtly refreshments, and if he were to pronounce it more beautiful than Mr. Troward's noble picture by Leonardo da Vinci*,- so long as he thinks it is so, it unquestionably is so to him. There can be no doubt but that he is the standard of taste to himself, because, when he calls the thing beautiful, he only means to say that it excites in him that emotion, of the real existence of which he of course can be the only judge. But will this same signpost appear beautiful to others? and to whom? and to how many must it appear to be so, before you call it absolutely beautiful? To the mob, to all human beings, or only to the enlightened few? I answer to this, that the judges differ just according to the difficulty of the subject: there are some questions of the beautiful so very simple, for the decision of which such very little understanding is required, and where the experience of all men is so much upon a level, that in those, the mass of mankind are certainly the proper referees. Are splendid colours more beautiful than dull colours? Is a soft surface more agreeable than a hard surface? In such simple questions of beauty as this, the most ordinary understanding is as good as the best. But when you come to the complicated meaning of the word beauty, adopted in the phrase of "a beautiful poem," or "a beautiful picture, -when the subject is to be understood, the selection decided on, comparison with other rival efforts made, a labourer from the streets can be no judge of such excellences as these, and therefore his opinion can form no part of that standard to which I refer the decision in this species of beauty; for we must take along with us, that as the word taste is merely a general expression for several distinct feelings, so the term beauty, itself involves no small number of distinct

*This picture of the Logos was in the possession of Mr. Troward when this lecture was delivered: it is now in the collection of Mr. Miles, of Leigh Court, near Bristol.

feelings, which have received this common appellation.
If, then, the species of beauty be stated, and a standard.
required for its excellences and defects, I determine it
by voting, by no means admitting universal suffrage,
but requiring that a man shall have forty shillings a
year in common sense, and have paid the usual taxes of
labour, attention, observation, and so on. But, to drop
the metaphor, these are the ingredients which must enter
into the composition of any mind which can be allowed
to decide upon any species of beauty. In the first place
there must be an absence of all prejudice and party
spirit, because, though this may inspire the feeling of
beauty, as well as any other cause, still it is a very
ephemeral cause of that feeling; and in speaking of the
standard of beauty, we do not mean only that which
will be judged beautiful to-day, but that which will be
judged beautiful for ages to come.
Then we must re-
member, that the word beautiful always implies some
comparison. The prose of Bunyan is agreeable to me
till I have read that of Dryden; Dryden's, till I am fa-
miliarised to the works of Addison. The arrantest daub
in painting may appear agreeable to me, till I have seen
the masters in the Flemish school; and I cease to
admire these latter when I am become acquainted with
the great Italian pictures. The very term beautiful
implies something superior to common effects; and
therefore we require in a judge of the beautiful, that
from experience he should have ascertained what is a
common effect, what not. A man who has seen very
few pictures, is a bad judge of any single picture, be-
cause, though he can tell whether he is pleased or not,
he cannot tell whether he is pleased more or less than
he should be, by pictures in general. Therefore, in ad-
dition to candour, a judge of the beautiful must have
experience; and he must also have delicacy of feeling:
a man may reason himself out of this feeling of beauty,
or reason himself into it; but, after all, the thing is a

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matter of feeling, and there are some men of such metallic nerves, and blunt entrails, that Milton could never have written them into sublimity, or Michael Angelo painted them into emotion: of course they can be no judges of the beautiful, any more than the blind can determine upon the diversity of colours. Wherever, then, the standard of any species of beauty is required, we may safely say it rests in the opinion of candid men, of men who have had experience in that department of beauty, who have feeling for it, and who have competent understandings to judge of the design and reasoning, which are always the highest and most excellent of all beauties. Such men, where they are to be found, form the standard in every department of beauty, and in every ingredient of taste. How such critics are to be found, is another question: that they exist, no man doubts; and their joint influence ultimately prevails, and gives the law to public opinion. But I hear some men asking where they are to be found? and who they are? with a sort of exultation, as if there were any wit, or talent, or importance, in the question. They

found in Dover Street, Albemarle Street, Berkeley Square, the Temple; anywhere wherever reading, thinking men, who have seen a great deal of the world, are to be found. I myself could mention the names of twenty persons, whose opinions influence the public taste in this town; and then, when opinions are settled here, those opinions go down by the mail-coach, to regulate all matters of taste for the provinces.

The progress of good taste, however, though it is certain and irresistible, is slow. Mistaken pleasantry, false ornament, and affected conceit, perish by the discriminating hand of time, that lifts up from the dust of oblivion, the grand and simple efforts of genius. Title, rank, prejudice, party, artifice, and a thousand disturbing forces, are always at work to confer unmerited fame; but every recurring year contributes its remedy

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