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of genuine and self-existent Forms-quickness, slowness, number, figure, &c., as they are in themselves, not visible to the eye, but conceivable only by reason and intellect. The movements of the heavenly bodies are exemplifications, approaching nearest to the perfection of these ideal movements, but still falling greatly short of them. They are like visible circles or triangles drawn by some very exact artist; which, however beautiful as works of art, are far from answering to the conditions of the idea and its definition, and from exhibiting exact equality and proportion.' All this is in accordance with the Ideal theory of Plato. Ideas are not only the pre-existing causes of real things, but the highest and most delightful objects of human contemplation.

It is remarked by Mr. Grote that the Greek rò raλóv includes, in addition to the ordinary meanings of beauty, the fine, the honourable, the exalted.

ARISTOTLE alludes to the nature of Beauty, in connexion with Poetry. The beauty of animals, or of any objects composed of parts, involves two things-orderly arrangement and a certain magnitude. Hence an animal may be too small to be beautiful; or it may be too large, when it cannot be surveyed as a whole. The object should have such magnitude as to be easily seen.

Among the lost writings of ST. AUGUSTIN was a large treatise on Beauty; and it appears from incidental allusions in the extant works, that he laid especial stress on Unity, or the relation of the parts of a work to the whole, in one comprehensive and harmonious design.

In SHAFTESBURY's Characteristics, the Beautiful and the Good are combined in one lofty conception, and a certain internal sense (the Moral Sense) is assumed as perceiving both alike.

In the celebrated Essays of ADDISON, on The Pleasures of the Imagination, the aesthetic effects are resolved into Beauty, Sublimity, and Novelty; but scarcely any attempt is made to pursue the analysis of either Beauty or Sublimity.

HUTCHESON maintains the existence of a distinct internal sense for the perception of Beauty. He still, however, made a resolution of the qualities of beautiful objects into combinations of variety with uniformity; but did not make the obvious inference, that the sense of beauty is, therefore, a sense of variety with uniformity. He discarded the considerations of fitness, or the secondary aptitudes of these qualities.

In the article Beau,' in the French Encyclopédie, the author, DIDEROT, announced the doctrine that 'Beauty consists in the perception of Relations.' This is admitted on all hands to be too wide and too vague.

PÈRE BUFFIER. Père Buffier identified Beauty with the type of each species; it is the form at once most common and most rare. Among faces, there is but one beautiful form, the others being not beautiful. But while only a few are modelled after the ugly forms, a great many are modelled after the beautiful form. Beauty, while itself rare, is the model to which the greater num

ber conform. Among fifty noses we may find ten well-made, all after the same model; whereas out of the other forty, not above two or three will be found of the same shape. Handsome people have a greater family likeness than ugly people. A monster is what has least in common with the human figure; beauty is what has most in common. The true proportion of parts is the most common proportion. From this it might be concluded that beauty is simply what we are most accustomed to, and therefore arbitrary -a conclusion that Buffier does not dispute. At least, hitherto, he thinks, the essential character of beauty has not been discovered. If there be a true beauty, it must be that which is most common to all nations.

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, in his theory of beauty, has followed Père Buffier. The deformed is what is uncommon; beauty is what is above 'all singular forms, local customs, particularities, and details of every kind.' He gives, however, a turn to the doctrine, in meeting the objection that there are distinct forms of beauty in the same species, as those represented by the Hercules, the Gladiator, and the Apollo. He observes that each of these is a representation, not of an individual, but of a class, within the class man, and is the central idea of its class. Not any one gives the ideal beauty of the species man; 'for perfect beauty in any species must combine all the characters which are beautiful in that species.'

HOGARTH, in his Analysis of Beauty, enumerates six elements as variously entering into beautiful compositions. (1) Fitness of the parts to the design for which the object was formed. Twisted columns are elegant; but, as they convey an idea of weakness, they displease when required to bear a great weight. Hogarth resolves proportion (which some consider an independent source of beauty) into fitness. The proportions of the parts are determined by the purpose of the whole. (2) Variety, if it do not degenerate into confusion, is a distinct element of beauty. The gradual lessening of the pyramid is a kind of variety. (3) Uniformity or symmetry is a source of beauty only when rendered necessary by the requirements of fitness. The pleasure arising from the symmetry of the two sides of the body, is really produced by the knowledge that the correspondence is intentional and for use. Painters always avoid regularity, and prefer to take a building at an angle rather than in front. Uniformity is often necessary to give stability. (4) Simplicity (as opposed to complexity), when joined with variety, is pleasing, because it enables the eye to enjoy the variety with ease; but, without variety, it is wholly insipid. Compositions in sculpture are generally kept within the boundary of a cone or pyramid, on account of the simplicity or variety of those figures. (5) Intricacy is pleasing because the unravelling of it gives the interest of pursuit. Waving and serpentine lines are beautiful, because they lead the eye a wanton kind of chase.' (6) Magnitude contributes to raise our admiration.

Hogarth's best known views refer to the beautiful in Lines.

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Waving lines are more beautiful than straight lines, because they are more varied; and among waving lines, there is but one entitled to be called the Line of Beauty, the others bulging too much, and so being gross and clumsy, or straightening too much, and thereby becoming lean and poor. But the most beautiful line is the serpentine line, called, by Hogarth, the Line of Grace. This is the line drawn once round, from the base to the apex, of a long, slender cone. As contrasted with straight lines, the lines of beauty and grace possess an intrinsic power of pleasing. Hogarth produced numerous instances of the beauty of those forms, and inferred that objects were beautiful according as they could be admitted into composition. This doctrine, although denied by Alison, contains a portion of the truth.

BURKE's theory, contained in his Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful, is couched in a material phraseology. He says that beautiful objects have the tendency to produce an agreeable relaxation of the fibres. Thus, smooth things are relaxing; sweet things, which are the smooth of taste, are relaxing too; and sweet smells, which bear a great affinity to sweet tastes, relax very remarkably.' 'We often apply the quality of sweetness metaphorically to visual objects;' and following out this remarkable analogy of the senses, he purposes to call sweetness the beautiful of the taste."

His theory leads him to put an especial stress on the beauty of smoothness, a quality so essential to beauty, he says, that he cannot recollect anything beautiful but what is smooth. 'In trees and flowers, smooth leaves are beautiful; smooth slopes of earth in gardens; smooth streams in landscapes; smooth coats of birds and beasts in animal beauty; in fine women, smooth skins; and, in several sorts of ornamental furniture, smooth and polished surfaces.' The one-sidedness of this view was obvious enough. Smoothness is one element of beauty, in certain circumstances, and for obvious reasons. The smoothness and the softness of the animal body are connected with the pleasure of touch. The smoothness of polished surfaces is the condition of their brilliancy; an effect enhanced by sharp angles, although Burke alleges that he does not find any natural object that is angular, and at the same time beautiful. The smooth, shaven green' of well kept lawns is associated with the fit or the useful; it suggests the industry, attention, or art, bestowed upon it by the opulent and careful owner. The same smoothness and trim regularity, Stewart observes, would not make the same agreeable suggestions in a sheep walk, a deer park, or the neighbourhood of a venerable ruin. Again, in the moss-rose, the opposite of smoothness is beautiful.

It has been remarked by Price (and Dugald Stewart concurs in the remark) that Burke's general principles of beauty-smoothness, gradual variation, delicacy of make, tender colours, and such as insensibly melt into each other-are strictly applicable to female beauty.' Even in treating of the beauty of Nature, says Stewart, Burke's imagination always delights to repose on her softest and most feminine features; or, to use his own language, on 'such

qualities as induce in us a sense of tenderness and affection, or some other passion the most nearly resembling them.'

ALISON's work on Taste was published in 1790. The First Part of it is occupied with an analysis of what we feel when under the emotions of Beauty or Sublimity. He endeavours to show that this effect is something quite different from SENSE, being in fact, not a Simple, but a Complex Emotion, involving (1) the production of some Simple Emotion, or the exercise of some moral affection, and (2) a peculiar exercise of the Imagination.

The author occupies many pages in describing the nature of this peculiar exercise of Imagination, which must go along with the simple pleasure. When any object of sublimity or beauty is presented to the mind, every man is conscious, he says, of a train of thought being awakened analogous in character to the original object; and unless such a train be awakened, there is no æsthetic feeling. He illustrates the position by supposing first the case where something occurs to prevent the outgoing of the imagination, as when the mind is occupied with some incompatible feeling, for example, pain or grief, or a purely intellectual engrossment of attention. So, there may be characters wholly unsuited to this play of imagination, as there are others in whose minds it luxuriates. Again, there are associations that increase the exercise of imagination, and also the emotion of beauty. Such are the local associations of each one's life, and the historic associations whereby the interest of places is enhanced-Runnymede, Agincourt, to an Englishman; also the effect of poetry, music, and works of art in adding to the interest of natural objects and of historic events. The effect called Picturesqueness operates in the same direction, whether the occurrence of picturesque objects in a scene-an old tower in a deep wood-or the picturesque descriptions of poetry.

It is necessary to enquire farther into the distinctive nature of those trains of Imagination; or, wherein they differ from other trains. The author resolves the difference into these two circumstances: 1st, the nature of the Ideas or Conceptions themselves, and 2ndly, the Law of their Succession. On the first head, he remarks, that, while the great mass of our ideas excite no emotion whatever, the ideas of Beauty excite some Affection or Emotion -Gladness, Tenderness, Pity, Melancholy, Admiration, Power, Majesty, Terror; whence they may be termed ideas of emotion. On the second head,-the Law of Succession,-the ideas of imagination have an emotional character allied to the original emotion; the emotional keeping is preserved throughout.

The author adds a series of illustrations of the influences that further, or that arrest, the development of Sensibility and Taste, all tending to establish his two positions above given. On these positions, it may be remarked, that they evade, rather than explain, whatever difficulty may be on the subject; and that their value consists in illustrating the really important point that Imagination involves, as a part of its nature, the predominance of

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some emotion. When he says, that unless the imagination be free to operate, no feeling of beauty will arise in the presence of a beautiful object, he means only that we cannot be awakened to beauty, if the mind is preoccupied by some incompatible state; the possibility of imagination is the possibility of feeling.

He also assumes, without sufficient grounds, that the state of reverie is necessary to the emotion of beauty; that the mind cannot confine its thoughts to the original object, but must wander in quest of other objects capable of kindling the same emotion. Now, although this is a very natural and frequent effect of being once aroused to a strong emotion, there is no absolute necessity for it; nor would the emotion be excluded from the aesthetic class, although the thoughts were to be detained upon the beautiful object.

Such being his general doctrine, Alison applies it to explain the Sublimity and Beauty of the Material World. He starts with affirming positively that matter in itself, or as perceived by the senses, is unfit to produce any kind of emotion; the smell of a rose, the colour of scarlet, the taste of a pine-apple, are said to produce agreeable Sensations, but not agreeable Emotions. But the sensible qualities may form associations with emotions or affections, and become the signs for suggesting these to the mind. The author enumerates various classes of associations so formed. (1) The signs of Useful qualities, or the forms and colours of objects of utility, as a ship, suggest the pleasure of Utility. (2) The marks of Design, Wisdom, or Skill, suggest the emotions corresponding to those qualities. (3) Material appearances,- -as the countenance, gesture, or voice of a human being,-suggest the human attributes, Power, Wisdom, Fortitude, Justice, Benevolence, &c., and the pleasurable emotion that their contemplation inspires. (4) There are appearances that suggest mental qualities by metaphorical or personifying resemblance; whence we speak of the Strength of the Oak, the Delicacy of the Myrtle, the Boldress of a Rock, the Modesty of the Violet. So there is some analogy between an ascending path and Ambition, a descending and Decay; between sunshine and Joy, darkness and Sorrow, silence and Tranquillity, morning and Hope, soft colouring and Gentleness of Character, slenderness of form and Delicacy of Mind.

He then discusses the Sublimity and Beauty of Sound. As regards simple sounds, he allows no intrinsically pleasing effect, and attributes all their influence to associations, of which he cites numerous examples. He considers, however, that the leading distinctions of sound,-Loud and Low, Grave and Acute, Long and Short, Increasing and Diminishing,-have general associations, the result of long experience of the conjoined qualities: thus loud sound is connected with Power and Danger, and so on.

Under Compound Sounds, he has to consider Music. He still resolves the pleasure of musical composition into associations. Each musical Key suggests a characteristic emotion, by imitating as nearly as possible the expression of that emotion. He allows