صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

except, perhaps, the practice of exciting discord and dislike among the people, whenever an individual thinks himself ill-used or slighted; and the extraordinary method of assuming the name, weight and character of one half of a profession; and of claiming merit with it by libelling the other half; by shooting the arrows of calumny guarded by the shield of an anonymous publication, and then asserting that they are fair weapons of controversy, and the proper means to procure favor and redress. I sincerely wish you could as innocently retreat behind the panoply of conscience, t παις ως υπο μητερα,” and derive any consolation in reflecting that any good effect could be produced by the publication of your appeal. I greatly fear the poison will widely circulate, and you may have reason to repent your rashness, if, indeed, there remain in you any spark of attachment to the Church.

Without turning back to the pages I have already examined, which no one will deny are plentifully larded with abuse, I would ask any unprejudiced person, whether he thinks, 'that anything can have a greater tendency to create or perpetuate dislike to our establishment, than such assertions as the following, joined, as they are, with innuendos, which, though they seemingly grow out of the subject, are of a most deleterious nature, and must have a fatal effect on the simplicity of every unguarded churchman's heart. "A few persons in the parish, whose hostility to the curate procured his dismissal, against the earnest solicitations of hundreds in his favor, are of so bad a character for drunkenness, profaneness, and neglect of divine worship, that, by the established rules and laws, both of Church and State, they ought to be severely punished : yet so implicitly does the bishop rely upon the information he has received, that he pays not the least regard either to the good character of the curate, or to the bad character of his accusers, though he has been made particularly acquainted with them both!!" Through the attention paid by bishops to information against curates, the most indisputable for churchmanship, loyalty and good character, the merest bigot, or the man the most notorious for profaneness and infidelity, has it in his power to remove a curate almost at pleasure."-" The conclusion is, that such bishop is not sincere in his profession."- "What are we to expect from ministers of religion, who can thus approach the altar of God, in the very first instance, with a lie in their right hand?"-" One of two results we deem inevitable, in proportion as this system, now become so rampant, is pursued:-Either the population of our parishes, after repeated repulses and disappointments, will be disgusted, and go over to the dissenters; or, if they continue in the Church, will become indifferent, fawning, and bypocritical." What do you suppose, Sir, will be the result of your own appeal? Can VOL. XVII. NO XXXIII,

Pam.

N

anything contribute more to destroy unity? Can any language "tend more to relax moral obligation;"" to degrade the bishops in the eyes of the world;"" to introduce political evils;" "to promote disaffection and dissent ?"

Your "concluding address" I do not think it incumbent or proper for any single man to answer. It is directed principally to those whose authority is unquestionable. With what feelings the legislature will receive your appeal against "an arbitrary law" recently enacted, it is not for me to predict. Equally impertinent would it be to form a judgment of what the archbishops and bishops may reply, who, you assert, "punish men for believing what they profess, and doing what they ought:" and whose whole proceedings" are unscriptural, unconstitutional, and highly derogatory to equity and common sense." Your address to the clergy also I consider as better passed over, if we would retain those "feelings" and "sympathies," which ought always to be cherished by men of the same profession, more especially if that profession lead them to think soberly, and to promote harmony and universal peace. My aim in this examination of your appeal has been the investigation of truth, without descending to personal invective, or being biassed by private opinion. Sorry should I be, if I were supposed to believe you, as you assert you have been treated, as the worst of men." I have already said, that I consider your appeal inconsiderate; and I sincerely wish that your talents had been employed in a better cause; and that every member of our sacred order would remember, and practically follow, the apostle's advice. "Let nothing be done through strife or vain glory, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves."

66

very

That you may be soon aware of the impropriety of your attack on the ordinances of your Church and the laws of your country; and that you will endeavour to counteract the mischief, which your appeal is assuredly calculated to produce, is the sincere wish of him, who, though he has felt it his duty to expose the fallacy of your arguments, will never, he trusts, be induced to count you as an enemy, but would rather admonish you as a brother."

66

J. N.

1

[blocks in formation]

INTRODUCTION.

THAT exercise of the judging faculty by which we distinguish the beautiful and harmonious in objects, the agreeable in feeling, or which even determines in us the sentiment of moral approbation, is not altogether improperly named, after the lowest of the senses, TASTE, since this sense is that in which the agreeable is first disclosed, and that in which the mind is first excited to distinguish and to choose when animal nature in man is barely raised above the vegetal.

Taste, therefore, extends with propriety to every object of sense; and, doing so, it must have a principle by which it is identified in each of the senses; and it is the chief business of the following Essay to point out this principle, and to indicate that analogy by which the sensible sciences are more intimately related and connected among themselves, and more remotely with the whole family of the sciences.

We have attempted to demonstrate, in preceding Essays, the ground upon which this analogy reclines, and to illustrate it by the coincidences of the physical or material sciences, through which we have been conducted in natural order to the Esthetical or sensible.'

ESTHETICS, in the widest acceptation, denotes that genus of science which comprehends whatever lies between physical or material and metaphysical or intellectual science, which are its two correlative genera; it therefore comprehends whatever belongs to the philosophy of sense, as distinguished from matter and intelligence.

We have, accordingly, in our universal outline assigned to Esthetics; first, the Appetites, or bodily affections; secondly, the

[blocks in formation]

senses; and thirdly, the passions or mental affections, as species; the first as conducive to being, the second to knowledge or knowing, and the third to volition or doing. Setting apart the doctrine of the appetites, which minister to the material functions of sensitive bemgs, and that of the passions, which are accessary to the moral, on the other extreme, we confine our present view to that of the

senses.

Sense is the universal medium of concurrence between the material or external subsistence and the intellectual or internal,' and is, accordingly, the ground of all our knowledge of external objects by the organs of touch, taste and smell, sight and sound; commonly called the five senses. These, though five in number as organically or physically distinguished, are, as instrumental to knowledge, but three in kind; namely, touch, sight and sound; to the first of which belong taste and smell: indeed the latter, approaching the appetite of hunger, are the links which connect appetite with sense, and con-. tribute little to knowledge or science. Touch, sight and sound, are accordingly instrumental and appropriate to three distinct sciences, oral, visual and tangible.

The first of these, of which the ear is the appropriate organ, is MUSIC OR HARMONICS, which has only one dimension, namely, longitude; the second, of which the eye is the organ, is CHROMATICS, and has two dimensions, longitude and latitude; and the third, of which the organ is the hand and whole nervous system and sense of touch, is the science of figure, PLASTICS OR GEOMETRY, which has three dimensions, longitude, latitude and profundity.

We design, therefore, to treat of the analogy of these sciences; first, by a parallel of chromatics with harmonics, or of colors with sounds; and secondly, by a like parallel of plastics with chromatics, or of colors with figures; and thirdly, to point out some coincidences of the senses in general.

Some difficulty may, perhaps, arise from the ambiguity of terms used in common by the musician and colorist, and often equivocally by both; add to which, that in all subjects wherein there is a reciprocal reference between that which precedes and that which follows, there will ever of necessity be some obscurity. Such difficulties will, however, be easily surmounted by a little attention and retrospection in the reader.

Finally, we have subjoined, by way of Appendix, some Experiments and Remarks upon Light and Colors, which may serve in many respects to illustrate and confirm the doctrine delivered in our first part.

[blocks in formation]
[ocr errors]
« السابقةمتابعة »