of disease. Here are disagreeable associations connected with the appearance of smoothness; but any single object, considered by itself, is considered as more beautiful when smooth than when rough, except where (as I have said before) the roughness is the sign of a pleasant, or the smoothness of an unpleasant, quality.

The forms of regular figures are agreeable, from the relations observed between the parts. The mind takes some pleasure in noticing that one side of a square is precisely like the other; that one angle is exactly of the same magnitude as its diagonal. All forms which are regular are much more distinctly comprehended, and easily retained, than any irregular form; because the accurate observation of one or two parts often leads to the knowledge of the whole. Thus, from a side, and solid angle, we have the whole regular solid; the measure of one side gives the whole square, one radius the whole circle, two diameters an oval, one ordinate and abscissa the parabola; and so on in more complex figures, which have any regularity, they can easily be determined and known in every part from a few data: whereas it might cost a man half his life to remember the form of the first pebble he picked up in the streets, so as to reproduce it at pleasure. Is, then, that form always agreeable in single objects which is regular? Is a square nose agreeable? or a head tapering off to a cone beautiful? No; they are both monstrous. Is a square tree upon espaliers more beautiful than a tree left to itself? No; it gives you an idea of restraint and confinement. Does, then, a square house give you an idea of restraint and confinement? No, by no means; you do not expect wildness in walls, and luxuriancy in buttresses: no man is so fond of the picturesque that he raises part of his drawing-room floor into hillocks, and depresses the rest into glens and valleys: the approach from the door to the table is not by any spiral and circuitous progress, but the servant enters, and, with the most unpicturesque straightness, deposits what he has to leave. The regularity of the figures, instead of the notion of restraint, conveys the notion of comfort in the use, and of skill and economy in the building. Walls have no natural

disposition to assume one form more than another: trees have.

Those forms are beautiful which are associated with agreeable ends; as strength, and health, and activity. Strength, however, is a quality in animals, which may be so easily turned to our destruction, that it requires to be joined with the notion of utility, to legitimate the usage of the word beautiful. The form of a rhinoceros indicates that he is as strong as a village, yet no one calls him beautiful. The form of an ox, or a cart-horse, which indicates strength supereminently above other animals of the same sort, is called beautiful-not by him whose mind has not been impressed with a strong association between the form and the useful quality; but as breeders, and men curious in cattle, do not scruple to apply to forms indicative of useful qualities the appellation of beauty. However, I will discuss this more at length, when I come to consider the question synthetically, and to show (what I believe to be true), that any surprising adaptation of means to ends, immediately excites the feeling of the beautiful, except where association intervenes to prevent it.

Forms which excite the notion of swiftness, are commonly beautiful; or of a mixture of swiftness and strength. The greater part of our associations respecting beautiful forms, are taken from our own species. We find magnitude and strength of form, united with good qualities, which excite respect rather than affection; and with bad ones, which excite fear rather than pity: with courage, perseverance, and intrepidity; with violence, harshness, and oppression. Experience, on the contrary, teaches us that delicacy of form is united with gentleness and benevolence, which are the objects of affection; and with indecision, timidity, and fluctuation, which are the objects of compassion. This, if I mistake not, is the origin of that association in favor of delicacy of form, and of the application to it of the term beautiful: and of course, when the association is once established, it is extended to those inanimate objects from whence it would never have originated; for I can not conceive that the delicacy of a flower, by which is prin

cipally meant its fragility, the facility with which any exterior violence can destroy it, can of itself be any cause of our deeming it beautiful,-unless our experience of moral beings had previously taught us to associate with the emblem of outward weakness, a thousand beautiful feelings of pity, gratitude, kindness, and other the best and fairest emotions of the mind.

LECTURE XIV.

ON THE BEAUTIFUL-PART II.

"ALL the objects which are exhibited to our view by Nature," says Sir Joshua Reynolds, "upon close examination will be found to have their blemishes and defects. The most beautiful forms have something about them like weakness, minuteness, or imperfection. But it is not every eye that perceives these blemishes; it must be an eye long used to the contemplation and comparison of these forms, and which, by a long habit of observing what any set of objects of the same kind have in common, has acquired the power of discerning what each wants in particular. This long, laborious comparison, should be the first study of the painter who aims at the greatest style. By this means he acquires a just idea of beautiful forms; he corrects Nature by herself, her imperfect state by her more perfect. His eye being enabled to distinguish the accidental deficiencies, excrescences, and deformities of things, from their general figures, he makes out an abstract idea of their forms, more perfect than any one original: and, what may seem a paradox, he learns to design naturally, by drawing his figures unlike to any one object. This idea of the perfect state of nature, which the artist calls the ideal beauty, is the great leading principle by which works of genius are conducted. By this, Phidias acquired his fame; he wrought upon a sober principle what has so much excited the enthusiasm of the world; and by this method you who have courrage to tread the same path, may acquire equal reputation.

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This is the idea which has acquired, and which seems to have a right to, the epithet of divine; as it may

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be said to preside, like a supreme judge, over all the productions of nature, appearing to be possessed of the will and intention of the Creator, as far as they regard the external form of living beings. When a man once possesses this idea in its perfection, there is no danger but that he will be sufficiently warmed by it himself, and be able to warm and ravish every one else.

"Thus it is from a reiterated experience, and a close comparison of the objects of nature, that an artist becomes possessed of the idea of that central form, if I may so express it, from which every deviation is deformity. But the investigation of this form, I grant, is painful; and I know but of one method of shortening the road;that is, by a careful study of the works of the ancient sculptors, who, being indefatigable in the school of nature, have left models of that perfect form behind them, which an artist would prefer as supremely beautiful, who had spent his whole life in that single contemplation. But if industry carried them thus far, may not you also hope for the same reward from the same labor? We have the same school opened to us that was opened to them, for Nature denies her instructions to none who desire to become her pupils."

Every body must perceive that in this opinion of Sir Joshua's there is a great deal of ingenuity as well as justice and, in order to ascertain the effect of custom on the beauty of forms, I begin with stating, that where the customary figure of animals is very materially deviated from, there we have always a sense of deformity and disgust. I carefully avoid mentioning those parts of animals where a deviation from the customary figure would imply disease and weakness, and prevent the animal from acting as Nature intended it should. A crooked spine gives us the very opposite notions to the beautiful, not merely because it is contrary to the customary figure of the animal, but because experience has taught us to associate it with the notions of disease and imbecility of body. But, in order to show the effect of custom upon the beautiful, take a chin, which is of no use at all. A chin ending in a very sharp angle would be perfect deformity. A man whose chin terminated in a