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laying out of grounds, and, secondarily, the treatment of these grounds by culture, and the investment of them with such forms as utility and beauty may prescribehaving its spring (like the preceding) in human necessity, but, in the supply of this want, inviting decoration; (3) Sculpture, whose distinctive excellence is that it embodies the highest possible degree of formal beauty in a single figure, converting (unlike the first) the marble or the stone into an expression of the inspiring idea—most often, man, in the full-developed energy of his physical, moral, and intellectual being; (4) Painting, which, with the superior pliancy and manageableness of its material, can represent under one view a number of distinct objects or simultaneous events, and can exhibit, beyond rivalry, those more delicate and evanescent phenomena which interpret the heart to the eye, showing, in the human figure, the inner state, its passions and emotions, in all their depth and variety, (5) Music, in which the sensuous element, sound, is completely blended and identified with the feeling or passion expressed, the opposites of variety and unity being reconciled in a satisfying whole by two essential properties-quantity, or duration in time, and quality, or the key and scale of tone, the one laying the foundation of rhythmical movement, the other of melody and harmony; yielding no distinct image, yet awakening associations, reviving memories, and at its best, full of haunting thought, a sense of the mystery of being; (6) Literature, in the less extended sense - thought and feeling carefully, curiously, or beautifully expressed, affording pleasure not only by the things said, but by the way in which they are said.

The pleasures derived from natural objects and the elegant arts are known as the Pleasures of Taste. They may also be called Pleasures of the Imagination, as far as they call for the exercise of this faculty or depend upon

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its action. So far as related to organic impression, they are yielded first and principally by the most refined and spiritual of all our senses, sight and hearing. There is, to be sure, a pleasure in the scent of a rose, in the flavor of a fruit, in the manipulation of a smooth, soft, and velvet surface; but the nostrils, the palate, and the touch, are by common consent, held to be of inferior rank to the eyes and ears, whose pleasures are an end in themselves increasing in exquisiteness by repetition, contributing to the refining rather than the sustaining of life, and never exposing their votaries to the charge of intemperance or inordinate indulgence. We stand, therefore, engaged in honor, as well as interest, to second the purposes of nature, by cultivating the pleasures of the eye and ear; those, especially, that require extraordinary culture - such as arise from poetry, painting, sculpture, music, gardening, and architecture. This, especially, is the duty of the opulent, who have leisure to improve their minds and their feelings. The fine arts are contrived to give pleasure to the eye and ear, disregarding the inferior senses. taste for these arts is a plant that grows naturally in many soils; but without culture, scarcely to perfection in any soil. It is susceptible of much refinement; and is, by proper care, greatly improved. In this respect, a taste in the fine arts goes hand in hand with the moral sense, to which, indeed, it is nearly allied.''

1 Lord Kames,

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CHAPTER XIII.

ESTHETICS OF EXPRESSION -THE

BEAUTIFUL.

He who cannot see the beautiful side is a bad painter, a bad friend, a bad lover; he cannot lift his mind and his heart so high as goodness.-JOUBERT.

The useful encourages itself; for the multitude produce it, and no one can dispense with it; the beautiful must be encouraged; for few can set it forth, and many need it.-GOETHE.

AN

N affluent and immortal theme, to some notion of which we may be helped, though we reach not the heart of the mystery.

A figure of speech, a thought, a star, a landscape, a musical air, may strike us pleasurably without any direct and definite exertion of the intellect. property that they have in common According to Hume, it is subjective

What is that one what is beauty? a mere feeling, a

quality residing in the percipient, and not in the external object. Things are not beautiful in themselves,' says Jeffrey, 'but only as they serve to suggest interesting conceptions to the mind.' Therefore, a poem and a pair of slippers, an act of charity and a saddle-horse, are equally beautiful, since all alike may lead to the same chain of interesting remembrances.

The universal speech and consciousness of men attest that the beautiful comes into our experience from without, a reality not originated within us. But what is it in the object that constitutes its beauty? Is it novelty? All things, when first seen, are novel; but not all are beautiful, while many continue to charm us when they have ceased to be curious or strange, and others even displease

simply because they are new. Or is it utility -- fitness to conduce in some way to our welfare, to serve in some way our purposes? Then is a stack of straw fairer than the roseate hues of morning, or a spade more admirable than the Apollo Belvidere? Is it unity in variety? Not everything is beautiful that presents this combination, while some things that lack it, as particular colors, valleymists or cloud-masses, are beautiful. Is it order and proportion? The snout or the leg of the swine is as fine a specimen of these elements in conjunction as that of the agile and graceful courser, but it is not equally admired, if admired at all.

There remains the spiritual theory, which makes beauty to consist in the more or less translucent embodiment of idea. Behind and within every form of being-the crystal, the violet, the spreading elm, the drooping willow, the statue, the cathedral, insect, bird, beast, and man- there is immanent, and variously manifested, the Over-Soul: all mean something, all express something; and in proportion to depth of meaning, to luminousness of expression in proportion as the Infinite discloses itself, is object, act, thought, or emotion beautiful. Thus Hegel becomes intelligible, when he calls the beautiful 'the sensuous shining forth of the idea'; and Schelling, who says: The beautiful is beyond form; it is substance, the universal; it is the look and expression of the spirit of Nature.'

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We are to be congratulated that so high an authority as Mr. Ruskin has spoken so fully, so clearly, so instructively, on this subject. Of the theoretical writings of others in this field, we might almost say, 'Burn them, for their value is in Modern Painters.' Surely no apology will be needed for quoting, at some length, utterances that will so amply reward your attention by the nobleness

of their truths and the excellence of their manner. foremost, a definition of the word:

And,

By the term beauty, then, properly are signified two things. First, that external quality of bodies already so often spoken of, and which, whether it occur in a stone, flower, beast, or in man, is absolutely identical, which, as I have already asserted, may be shown to be in some sort typical of the Divine attributes, and which, therefore, I shall, for distinction's sake, call typical beauty; and, secondarily, the appearance of felicitous fulfilments of function in living things, more especially of the joyful and right exertion of perfect life in man. And this kind of beauty I shall call vital beauty. Accordingly, of external Nature so conceived:

She has a body and a soul like man; but her soul is the Deity. It is possible to represent the body without the spirit; and this shall be like to those whose senses are only cognizant of body. It is possible to represent the spirit in its ordinary and inferior manifestations; and this shall be like to those who have not watched for its moments of power. It is possible to represent the spirit in its secret and high operations; and this shall be like only to those to whose watching they have been revealed.

In the more definite articulate expression of the spiritual, lies the main difference between the mineral and the plant. A warmer sympathy with the latter is natural, and the attribution of life to it but expresses the finer feeling of fellowship with it. Happy is he who in the material forms of the world recognizes the Divine.

Of that second kind of beauty which consists in the ' appearance of felicitous fulfilment of function in living things':

snow.

I have already noticed the example of very pure and high typical beauty which is to be found in the lines and gradations of unsullied If, passing to the edge of a sheet of it, upon the lower Alps, early in May, we find, as we are nearly sure to find, two or three little round openings pierced in it, and through these emergent, a slender, pensive, fragile flower, whose small, dark, purple-fringed bell hangs down and shudders over the icy cleft that it has cloven, as if partly wondering at its own recent grave, and partly dying of very fatigue after its hard won victory; we shall be, or we ought to

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