ings if we could be placed on some pinnacle of the universe, and could take in at one glance the regular and unbroken movements of the worlds and systems of infinite space.

§ 37. Explanations of the beauty of motion from Kames. The author of the Elements of Criticism, who studied our emotions with great care, has the following explanations on this subject: "Motion is certainly agreeable in all its varieties of quickness and slowness; but motion long continued admits some exceptions. That degree of continued motion, which corresponds to the natural course of our perceptions, is the most agreeable. The quickest motion is for an instant delightful; but it soon appears to be too rapid: it becomes painful by forcibly accelerating the course of our perceptions. Slow continued motion. becomes disagreeable for an opposite reason, that it retards the natural course of our perceptions.

“There are other varieties in motion, besides quickness and slowness, that make it more or less agreeable regular motion is preferred before what is ir regular; witness the motions of the planets in orbits nearly circular: the motion of the comets, in orbits less regular, is less agreeable.

"Motion uniformly accelerated, resembling an ascending series of numbers, is more agreeable than when uniformly retarded; motion upward is agreeable by the elevation of the moving body. What, then, shall we say of downward motion regularly accelerated by the force of gravity, compared with upward motion regularly retarded by the same force? Which of these is the most agreeable? This question is not easily solved.

"Motion in a straight line is no doubt agreeable; but we prefer undulating motion, as of waves, of a flame, of a ship under sail: such motion is more free, and also more natural. Hence the beauty of a serpentine river."

§ 38. Of intellectual and moral objects as a source of the beautiful. But we are not to suppose that there is nothing but matter, and its accessories of form, motion, and sound, which are the foundations of the beautiful. The world of mind also, so far as it can be brought before our contemplation, calls forth similar emotions.-The human countenance, in itself considered, is a beautiful object. Nature has decidedly given that character to the curving outline of the lips and forehead, the varying tints of the cheek, and the gentle illuminations of the eye. But these interesting traits, additional to what they are in themselves, convey ideas of mind; they may be regarded as natural indications and signs of the soul, which is lodged behind them; and although the human countenance is pleasing of itself, it is beyond question that the thought, and feeling, and amiability of which it is significant, are pleasing also. We may illustrate what we mean by an instance of this kind. If we fix our attention upon two men, whose outward appearance is the same, but one of them is far more distinguished than the other for clearness of perception, extent of knowledge, and all the essentials of true wisdom, we certainly look upon him with a higher degree of complacency. And this complacency is greatly heightened if we can add to these intellectual qualities certain qualities of the heart or of the moral character, such as a strong love of truth, justice, and benevolence.

It is true, that in the present life intellectual and moral objects are brought before our contemplation only in a comparatively small degree, surrounded and almost encumbered, as we are, with material things; but they are, nevertheless, proper objects of knowledge, and are among the great sources of beauty. There is no object of contemplation more pleasing and even enrapturing than the Supreme Being; but, in contemplating the Deity, we do not contemplate an outward and accessible picture, or a statue of wood and stone, but merely a complex internal conception, which embraces certain intellectual and moral

qualities and powers, and excludes everything of a purely material kind. Now when we dwell upon the parts of this great and glorious conception, and follow them out into the length and breadth of infinite wisdom, of infinite benevolence, of unsearchable power and justice, and of other attributes, which are merged together and assimilated in this great sun of moral perfection, we find such a splendour and such a fitness in them that we cannot but be filled with delight. The object before us, unless we may more properly speak of it as sublime, is obviously one of transcendent natural and moral beauty.

CHAPTER III.

ASSOCIATED BEAUTY.

§ 39. Associated beauty implies an antecedent or intrinsic beauty. THE views on the subject of beauty which we think it important to enforce, involve the positions, FIRST, that there is an original or intrinsic beauty; and, SECOND, that there is a beauty dependent on association.

-In opposition to those persons who may be disposed to maintain that no object is beautiful of itself, but that all its beauty depends on association, we wish, in this connexion, to introduce what we regard as an important remark of Mr. Stewart. "The theory," he remarks, "which resolves the whole effects of beautiful objects into Association, must necessarily involve that species of paralogism to which logicians give the name of reasoning in a circle. It is the province of association to impart to one thing the agreeable or the disagreeable effect of another; but association can never account for the origin of a class of pleasures different in kind from all the others we know. If there was nothing originally and intrinsically pleasing or beautiful, the associating principle would have no materials on which it could operate. This remark, if it be true, appears to be decisive * Essay on the Beautiful, chap. vi.

on the subject before us. And that it is true, we think must appear from the very nature of association. No writer, so far as we know, ascribes to Association an absolutely causative power; but only what may be called the power of transferring. If this be accepted as a correct view, namely, that Association does not of itself originate or create anything, but only acts in reference to what is already created or originated by bringing the objects before it into new and more intimate relations, then it follows as a necessity, that it cannot act without something being given for it to act upon. In other words, if as a principle of transfer and not of origination, it imparts beauty to one object, it must find it in another. And if the beauty exists in that other object in consequence of association, which is sometimes a supposable case, then it must have been drawn from some other source still more remote. In either case there must, of necessity, be somewhere an original or intrinsic beauty which is made the subject of such transfer.

§ 40. Objects may become beautiful by association merely.

In accordance with what has thus far been said on this whole subject, it will be kept in mind, that some of the forms of which matter is susceptible are pleasing of themselves and originally; also that we are unable to behold certain colours, and to listen to certain sounds, and to gaze upon particular expressions of the countenance, and to contemplate high intellectual and moral excellence, without emotions in a greater or less degree delightful. At the same time, it must be admitted, that, in the course of our experience, we find a variety of objects that seem, as they are presented to us, to be unattended with any emotion whatever; objects that are perfectly indifferent. And yet these objects, however wanting in beauty to the great mass of men, are found to be invested, in the minds of some, with a charm allowedly not their own. These objects, which previously excited no feelings of beau

ty, may become beautiful to us in consequence of the associations which we attach to them. That is to say, when the objects are beheld, certain former pleasing feelings peculiar to ourselves are recalled.

The lustre of a spring morning, the radiance of a summer evening, may of themselves excite in us a pleasing emotion; but, as our busy imagination, taking advantage of the images of delight which are before us, is ever at work and constantly forming new images, there is, in combination with the original emotion of beauty, a superadded delight. And if, in these instances, only a part of the beauty is to be ascribed to association, there are some others where the whole is to be considered as derived from that source.

Numerous instances can be given of the power of association, not only in heightening the actual charms of objects, but in spreading a sort of delegated lustre around those that were entirely uninteresting before. Why does yon decaying house appear beautiful to me, which is indifferent to another? Why are the desolate fields around it clothed with delight, while others see in them nothing that is pleasant? It is because that house formerly detained me as one of its inmates at its fireside, and those fields were the scenes of many youthful sports. When I now behold them, after so long a time, the joyous emotions which the remembrances of my early days call up within me are, by the power of association, thrown around the objects which are the cause of the remembrances.

§ 41. Further illustrations of associated feelings.

He who travels through a well-cultivated country town cannot but be pleased with the various objects which he beholds; the neat and comfortable dwellings; the meadows that are peopled with flocks and with herds of cattle; the fields of grain, intermingled with reaches of thick and dark forest. The whole scene is a beautiful one; the emotion we suppose to be partly original; a person, on being restored to sight by couching for the cataract, and having had no op