beyond what is necessary for useful ends, neatness suggests a mind alive to the orderly, which is a means to the useful.

14. The feeling of UNITY in Diversity, considered as a part of Beauty, owes its charm principally to Order, and to Intellectual relief.

The mind, overburdened with a multitude of details, seeks relief in order and in unity of plan. The successful reduction of a distracting host of particulars to simple and general heads, as happens through great discoveries of generalization, gives the thrill of a great intellectual relief. In all works abounding in detail, we crave for some comprehensive plan, enabling us to seize the whole, while we survey the parts. A poem, a history, a dissertation in science, a lecture, needs to have a discernible principle of order or unity throughout.

15. It is a principle of Art, founded in the nature of the feelings, to leave something to Desire.

To leave something to the Imagination is better than to express the whole. What is merely suggested is conceived in an ideal form and colouring. Thus, in a landscape, a winding river disappears from the sight; the distant hazy mountains are realms for the fancy to play in. Breaks are left in a story, such as the reader may fill up. The proportioning and adjusting of the expressed and the suggested, would depend on the principles of Ideal Emotion.

16. Under so great a variety of exciting causes, a certain latitude must be allowed in characterizing the feeling of Beauty.

Experience proves, that all these different effects are not merely modes of pleasure, but congenial in their mixture. The common character of the emotion may be expressed as refined pleasure. Even when not great in degree, it has the advantage of durability. The many confluent streams of pleasure run into a general ocean of the pleasurable, where their specialities are scarcely distinguishable.

When Beauty is spoken of in a narrow sense, as excluding Sublimity, it points to the more purely passive delights, exemplified in sensuous pleasures, harmonies, tender emotion. Burke's identification of delicacy (as in the drooping flower) with beauty, hits the passive delights, as contrasted with the active. The boundary is not a rigid one. Much of the beauty of fitness appeals to the sentiment of power, the basis of the Sublime.

17. The SUBLIME is the sympathetic sentiment of superior Power in its highest degrees.

The objects of sublimity are, for the most part, such aspects and appearances as betoken great might, energy, or vastness, and are thereby capable of imparting sympathetically the elation of superior power.

Human might or energy is the literal sublime, and the point of departure for sublimity in other things. Superior bodily strength, as indicated either by the size and form of the members, or by actual exertion, lifts the beholder's mind above its ordinary level, and imparts a certain degree of grateful elation. The same may be said of other modes of superior power. Greatness of intellect, as in the master minds of the human race, is interesting as an object of mere contemplation. Moral energy, as heroic endurance and selfdenial, has inspired admiration in all times. Great practical skill in the various departments of active life awakens the same admiring and elevating sentiment. The spectacle of power in organized multitudes is still more imposing, and reflects an undue importance on the one man that happens to be at the head.

The Sublime of Inanimate things is derived or borrowed, by a fictitious process, from the literal sublimity of beings formed like ourselves. So great is our enjoyment of the feeling of superior power, that we take delight in referring the forces of dead matter to a conscious mind; in other words, personification. Starting from some known estimate, as in the physical force of an average man to move one hundredweight, we have a kind of sympathetic elation in seeing many hundredweights raised with ease by water or steam power. When the spectacle is common, we become indifferent to it; and we are re-awakened only by something different or superior.

It

The Sublime of Support is of frequent occurrence. applies to the raising of heavy weights; to the upward projection of bodies; and to the sustaining of great masses at an elevation above the surface, as piles of building, and mountains. All these effects imply great upheaving power, equivalent to human force many times multiplied. The more upright or precipitous the elevated mass, the greater the apparent power put forth in sustaining it. Sublimity is thus connected with height; from which it derives its name.

The Sublime of Active Energy, or power visibly at work, is seen in thunder, wind, waves, cataracts, rivers, volcanoes,

steam power, ordnance, accumulated animal or human force. Movement in the actual is more impressive than the quiescent results of movement.

The Sublime of Space, or of Largeness of Dimensions, is partly owing to the circumstance that objects of great power are correspondingly large. The ocean is voluminous. As regards empty space, great extent implies energy to traverse it, or mass to occupy it.

An Extended Prospect is sublime from the number of its contained objects, each possessing a certain element of impressiveness. There is also a sense of intellectual range or grasp, as compared with the confinement of a narrow spot; which is one of the many modes of the elation of superior power.

The Great in Time or Duration is Sublime; not mere duration in the abstract, but the sequence of known transactions and events, stretching over many ages. In this too, there is an intellectual elevation, and a form of superior might. The far past, and the distant future, to a mind that can people the interval, arouse the feeling of the sublime. The relics of ancient nations, the antiquities of the geological ages, inspire a sublimity, tinged with melancholy and pathos, from the retrospect of desolation and decay.

There is an incidental connexion of the Sublime with Terror. Properly, the two states of mind are hostile and mutually destructive; the one raises the feeling of energy, the other depresses it. In so far as a sublime object gives us the sense of personal, or of sympathetic danger, its sublimity is frustrated. The two effects were confounded by Burke in his Theory of the Sublime.

18. The foregoing principles might be tested and exemplified by a survey of Natural Objects. It is sufficient to advert to Human Beauty.

The Mineral world has its æsthetic qualities, chiefly colour and form. In Vegetable nature, there are numerous effects, partly of colour and form, partly of support, and partly of quasi-human expression. The beauties of scenery-of mountains, rocks, valleys, rivers, plains-are referable, without much difficulty, to the constituent elements above indicated. The Animal Kingdom contains many objects of æsthetic interest, as well as many of an opposite kind. The approach to humanity is the special circumstance; the suggestion of feeling is no longer fictitious, but real; and the interest is little removed from the human.

BEAUTY OF NATURAL OBJECTS.

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As regards Humanity, there are first the graces of the Exterior. The effects of colour and brilliancy,-in the skin, the eyes, the hair, the teeth,-are intrinsically agreeable. The Figure is more contested. The proportions of the whole are suited for sufficient, and yet light support; while the modifications of foot and limb are adapted for forward movement. The curvature of the outline is continuous and varying (in the ideal feminine figure), passing through points of contrary flexure, from convex to concave, and, again resuming the

convex.

The beauties of the Head and Face involve the most difficult considerations. In so far as concerns the symmetry of the two halves, and the curved outlines, we have intelligible grounds; but the proportional sizes of the face, features, and head, are determined by no general principles. We must here accept from our customary specimens a certain standard of mouth, nose, forehead, &c., and refine upon that by bringing in laws of proportion, curvature, and the susceptibility to agreeable expression. This is the only tenable mean between the unguarded theory of Buffier and Reynolds, who referred all beauty to custom, and the attempts to explain everything by proportion and expression. A Negro or a Mongol sculptor would be not only justified, but necessitated, to assume an ideal type different from the Greek, although he might still introduce general æsthetic considerations, that is to say, proportions, curves, fitness, and expression, so as not to be the imitator of any one actual specimen, or even of the most common variety. The same applies to the beauties seen in animals. The prevailing features of the species are assumed, and certain considerations either of universal beauty, or of capricious adoption, are allowed to have weight in determining the most beautiful type.

The graces of Movement, as such, are quite explicable. In the primitive effects of movement are included the curve line and the dying fall.' The movements, as well as attitudes, of a graceful form, can hardly be other than graceful.

The suggestion of Tender and of Sexual Feeling is connected with Colour, with Form, and with Movements. The tints of the face and of the surface generally are associated with the soft warm contact. By a link of connexion, partly natural (the result of a general law), the rounded and tapering form is suggestive of the living embrace; lending an interest to the hard cold marble of the statuary. The movements that excite the same train of feelings are known and obvious.

On all theories of Beauty, much is allowed to the Expression of pleasing states of mind. The amiable expression is always cheering to behold; and a cast of features permanently suited to this expression is beautiful.

When we inquire into what constitutes beauty in the human character, or the mental attributes of a human being, we find that the foundation of the whole is self-surrender. This is apparent in the virtues (also called graces) of generosity, affection, and modesty or humility; all which imply that the individual gives up a portion of self for others.

THEORIES OF THE BEAUTIFUL.

It is usual to carry back the history of the question of Beauty to Sokrates and Plato.

The question of Beauty is shortly touched upon, in one of the Sokratic conversations reported in the Memorabilia. SOKRATES holds that the beautiful and the good, or useful, are the same; a dung-basket, if it answers its end, may be a beautiful thing, while a golden shield, not well formed for use, is an ugly thing. (Memorabilia III. 8.)

In the Dialogue of PLATO, called Hippias Major, there is a discussion on the Beautiful. Various theories are propounded, and to all of them objections, supposed insuperable, are made by the Platonic Sokrates. First, The Suitable, or the Becoming, is said to constitute beauty. To this, it is objected, that the suitable, or becoming, is what causes objects to appear beautiful, not what makes them really beautiful. Secondly, The Useful or Profitable. Much is to be said for this view, but on close inspection (says Sokrates) it will not hold. Thus Power, which when employed for useful purposes is beautiful, may be employed for evil, and cannot be beautiful. If you qualify by saying-Power employed for good-you make the good and the beautiful cause and effect, and therefore different things, which is absurd. Thirdly, The beautiful is a particular variety of the Agreeable or Pleasurable, being all those things that give pleasure through sight and hearing. Sokrates, however, demands why these pleasures should be so much distinguished over other pleasures. He is not satisfied to be told that they are the most innocuous and the best; an answer that (he says) leads to the same absurdity as before; the beautiful being made the cause, the good the effect; and the two thereby accounted different things.

Turning now to the Republic (Book VII.), we find a mode of viewing the question, more in accordance with the mystic and transcendental side of Plato. Speaking of the science of Astronomy, he says (in summary):-The heavenly bodies are the most beautiful of all visible bodies, and the most regular of all visible movements, approximating most nearly, though still with a long interval of inferiority, to the ideal figures and movements