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.

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 woula 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

point, would be under the immediate necessity of retiring to America; he would be a perfect horror: and for no other reason that I can possibly see, but that Nature has shown no intention of making such a chin,-we have never been accustomed to see such chins. Nature, we are quite certain, did not intend that the chin should be brought to a perfect angle, nor that it should be perfectly circular, and therefore either of these extremes is a deformity. Now, something considerably removed from the perfect circle and the perfect angle, is the chin we have been most accustomed to see, and which, for that reason, we most approve of. Within certain limits, one chin is as common as another, and as handsome as another: there are degrees of tendency to the circle and the angle, which we can at once pronounce to be ugly ; but there is a middle region of some extent, where all approximations to these two figures are equally common and equally handsome. The only objection to this doctrine of the central form, is, that it has been pushed too far; it has been urged that there is an exact middle point between the two extremes, which is the perfection of beauty, and to which nature is perpetually tending. This attempt at such very precise and minute discovery in the subject of beauty, appears to me to give a fanciful air to the whole doctrine, and to do injustice to the real truth it contains. In the construction of every form, Nature takes a certain range: to ascertain the ordinary limits of her range, is practical, rational, and useful; to aim at greater precision, and to speak as if you knew the very prototype at which Nature was always aiming, and from which she was always deviating on one side or the other, is to cheat yourself with your own metaphors, and to substitute illusion for plain fact. Within certain limits, every tendency to the. circle or the angle, are equally removed from deformity, because they are equally common, and they are (all other things being equal) equally beautiful. Of course I mean this only to apply where the expression is equal, and where mere historical association does not interfere to disturb the justice of the conclusions. The Grecian face is not. common: I hardly know what a Grecian face is, but I

am told by those who have studied these matters, that there are some parts of it,-the length, I fancy, between the nose and the lip,-which are extremely uncommon, and very rarely to be met with in Europe. This is very probable; but it is mere association. If the elegant arts had been transmitted to us from the Chinese instead of the Greeks, that singular piece of deformity, a Chinese nose, would very probably have been held in high estimation. Now what I have said about forms amounts to this Forms are beautiful which are associated with the notion of smoothness of touch, which are regular, which give the notion of delicacy, or recall any of a particular class of feelings of mind. What that particular class is, I shall attempt hereafter to specify.

So far I have attempted to show, that the contrary to that, which is the customary form of any species, is deformity. But is the customary form itself beautiful? does it create the opposite to disgust? I am strongly inclined to think it does not; that the mere commonness of any form does not give the notion of beauty it prevents the notion of deformity, but does not give the notion of beauty, for beauty itself is always un

common.

Mr. Burke says, “If I am not mistaken, a great deal of the prejudice in favor of proportion has arisen, not so much from the observations of any certain measures found in beautiful bodies, as from a wrong idea of the relation which deformity bears to beauty, to which it has been considered as the opposite: on this principle it was concluded, that where the causes of deformity were removed, beauty must naturally and necessarily be introduced. This, I believe, is a mistake; for deformity is opposed, not to beauty, but to the complete common form. If one of the legs of a man be found shorter than the other, the man is deformed, because there is something wanting to complete the whole idea we form of a man: and this has the same effect in natural faults, as maiming and mutilation produce from accidents. So if the back be humped, the man is deformed, because his back has an unusual figure, and what carries with it the idea of some misfortune: so if a man's neck be consider