attitude I should conceive to be quite as graceful as another. Mr. Burke has a long dissertation respecting the effect of utility or fitness, as a cause of beauty: he determines that it is not a cause of beauty, but I cannot think this decision conformable with matter of fact. I took occasion to observe, in my last lecture, that the term beauty, implied comparison, and that it was a term of the superlative degree. Now certainly, mere utility, unaccompanied by surprise, does never excite the feeling of beauty. There is nothing more useful than a plough, an axe, or a hammer, but nobody calls them beautiful; but whenever utility is promoted by a surprising adaptation of means to ends, there, the feeling of the beautiful is always excited, unless counteracted by some accidental association. "Why," says Mr. Burke, "upon "this principle of utility, the wedge-like snout of a sow, "with its tough cartilage at the end, the little sunk eyes, and the whole make of the head, so well adapted to its "offices of digging and rooting, would be extremely "beautiful." The great bag hanging to the bill of a pelican, a thing highly useful to this animal, would be likewise as beautiful in our eyes. In the first place, the pig is an animal degraded by all sorts of dirty associations, and therefore the instance is rather unfair: the bag of the pelican raises up, also, some association of disease; and this is the notion both the one and the other excites in common minds. But the anatomist, who has examined the structure of these parts carefully, and knows how they are composed, how moved, how connected with the rest of the body, is immediately struck with the feeling of the beautiful; and does not hesitate to denominate both the one and the other a beautiful provision of nature. In the same manner all the instances Mr. Burke quotes are easy to be answered, porcupines and hedgehogs are well provided by nature with means of defence; but anything associated with the idea of pain, wounds, and contention, is disagreeable. For the same reason, all the inventions of war, bombs, mines, cannon,-though they are useful, and excite surprise if they have not been often seen,--are never considered as beautiful, from the dreadful ideas with which they are connected. But I think it would be difficult to find anything useful, done by a surprising adaptation of means to end, which would not be called beautiful. How beautiful is the adaptation of the condensible nature of steam, to overcome the greatest obstacles in mechanics! or that adaptation of the elastic power of air, to produce a continued stream in the engines employed for fires! What is more useful than a saucepan? nothing, but the adaptation of means to the end excites no surprise. But what if a man were to invent a new and better kind of snuffers, effecting his object by a very striking method, would that be beautiful? Probably not; the end proposed is so trifling, that we should rather feel a sort of contempt for the man who had lavished his talent upon such an object; though it is very possible that the great ingenuity of the means may sanctify an object otherwise unimportant. Argand's lamp certainly deserves the appellation of a beautiful invention. Go to the Duke of Bedford's piggery at Woburn, and you will see a breed of pigs with legs so short, that their stomachs trail upon the ground; a breed of animals entombed in their own fat, overwhelmed with prosperity, success, and farina. No animal could possibly be so disgusting if it were not useful; but a breeder, who has accurately attended to the small quantity of food it requires to swell this pig out to such extraordinary dimensions, the astonishing genius it displays for obesity, and the laudable propensity of the flesh to desert the cheap regions of the body, and to agglomerate on those parts which are worth ninepence a pound, pound, such an observer of its utility, does not scruple to call these otherwise hideous - quadrupeds, a beautiful race of pigs. It is asked if perfection is the cause of beauty? Before the question is asked, it may be as well to determine what is meant by perfection? It often means the superlative of any thing. Perfect strength must mean the greatest strength that that species, or any other species, is accustomed to exhibit. Such strength would give no notion of beauty, nor would perfect swiftness; but rather of the sublime: less perfect swiftness would be much more likely to inspire us with the notion of the beautiful. What notion of beauty could perfect justice impart, or perfect courage? Perfect symmetry is the symmetry which is the most beautiful, which I have before referred to custom; I see no reason whatever for considering perfection as a cause of beauty. Variety is another very strong cause of beauty; and this is the reason why we are so fond of natural objects, ́and is the cause of the great bustle made about nature. I have no doubt but that (all other things being equal) a regular figure is more beautiful than an irregular figure, and that the principal reason why we like all the strange figures presented to us in a forest, among the boughs of the trees, or in a field by the irregular lay of the ground, is the perpetual gratification of this passion for variety which it affords. I went for the first time in my life, some years ago, to stay at a very grand and beautiful place in the country, where the grounds are said to be laid out with consummate taste. For the first three or four days I was perfectly enchanted; it seemed something so much better than nature, that I really began to wish the earth had been laid out according to the latest principles of improvement, and that the whole face of nature wore a little more the appearance of a park. In three days' time I was tired to death; a thistle, a nettle, a heap of dead bushes, anything that wore the appearance of accident and want of intention, was quite a relief. I used to escape from the made grounds, and walk upon an adjacent goose-common, where the cartruts, gravel-pits, bumps, irregularities, coarse ungentlemanlike grass, and all the varieties produced by neglect, were a thousand times more gratifying than the monotony of beauties the result of design, and crowded into narrow confines with a luxuriance and abundance utterly unknown to nature. When we speak of a beautiful landscape, we include under that term a vast variety of sensations, — the beauty of colours, of smells, and of sounds. It would be difficult to look at milch cattle without thinking of the fragrance of their milk, -or at hay in the haymaking season, without enjoying in imagination its delightful smell. "As one who long in populous city pent, Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air, To the beauty of sounds, smells, and colours, is to be added the beauty of variety, the notion of liberty, of health, of innocence, the association of a childhood past in the country, of the happy days every man has spent there, —all that Virgil has written, and Claude painted, of the country, the beautiful exertions of the highest minds to make that fairer which God has made so fair, -all these feelings go to make up the beauty of landscape, and give birth, by their united force, to that calm pleasure which has been felt in every age by those who have raised their minds above the struggles of passion, and the emotions of sense. Then every man, in looking at a landscape, paints to himself that scene of imaginary felicity he likes best: a merchant looks at an asylum from the toils of business; a mother marks out a healthy and sheltered spot for her children; an improver plants; a poet feels; an old man builds himself a retired cottage, and gradually wears away his remaining days amid the health and quiet of the fields. A landscape is everything to everybody; it is one person's property as well as another's; it gratifies every man's desire, and fills up every man's heart. The beauties of architecture I should conceive to be referable to the beauties of utility, of regularity, of delicacy, and of association. Why is the west window of the cathedral at York, beautiful? Let us endeavour to follow what passes in the mind, in looking at this celebrated piece of architecture. It is, in the first place, Gothic, and there is an association in favour of Gothic architecture; we have heard it is beautiful, and are prepared to admire it. The stone-work is very light, and therefore does not obstruct the passage of the sun's rays; nor does it give us the idea of labour uselessly employed, but, on the contrary, the idea of delicacy, which I have before stated to be a cause of beauty. It is full of regular figures, neatly cut, which it is not easy to make of stone. The whole is a regular figure, and bears a just proportion to the size of the building. As to the different orders of architecture, it is quite impossible to assent to the observations of those who would contend that their proportions are absolutely beautiful, that nature has made these proportions originally a cause of that feeling, independent of any utility to which those proportions may be subservient, and of any association with which they may be connected. The common sense of the business appears to me to be this: I see a pillar; I conceive it, as erected, to support something. I know the nature of stone, and its strength. If the proportions are so managed that I conceive the thing to be supported, will fall, it gives me the idea of weakness and |