is now signified to us by the livid and emaciated face of sickness, or the wrinkled front, the quivering lip, and hollow cheek of age; if this were the familiar law of our nature, can it be doubted that we should look upon these appearances, not with rapture, but with aversion, and consider it as absolutely ludicrous or disgusting, to speak of the beauty of what was interpreted by every one as the lamented sign of pain and decrepitude? Mr. Knight himself, though a firm believer in the intrinsic beauty of colours, is so much of this opinion, that he thinks it entirely owing to those associations that we prefer the tame smoothness, and comparatively poor colours of a youthful face, to the richly fretted and variegated countenance of a pimpled drunkard.

Such we conceive, would be the inevitable effect of dissolving the subsisting connexion between the animating ideas of hope and enjoyment, and those visible appearances which are now significant of those emotions, and derive their whole beauty from that signification; but the effect would be still stronger if we could suppose the moral expression of those appearances to be reversed in the same manner. If the smile, which now enchants us, as the expression of innocence and affection, were the sign attached by nature to guilt and malignity; if the blush which expresses delicacy and the glance that speaks intelligence, vivacity, and softness, had always been found united with brutal passion or idiot moodiness; is it not certain, that the whole of their beauty would be extinguished, and that our emotions from the sight of them would be the reverse of what they now are?

That the beauty of a living and sentient creature should depend, in a great degree, upon qualities peculiar to such a creature, rather than upon the mere physical attributes which it may possess in common with the inert matter around it, cannot indeed appear a very improbable supposition to any one; but it may be more difficult for some persons to understand how the beauty of mere dead matter should be derived from the feelings and sympathies of sentient beings. It is absolutely necessary, therefore, that we should give an instance or two of this derivation.

It is easy enough to understand how the sight of a picture or statue should affect nearly in the same way as the sight of the original; nor is it much more difficult to conceive, how the sight of a cottage should give us something of the same feeling as the sight of a peasant's family; and the aspect of a town raise many of the same ideas as the appearance of a multitude of persons. We may begin, therefore, with an example a little more complicated; take, for instance, the case of a common English landscape-green meadows with fat cattle-canals or navigable rivers-well fenced, well cultivated fields-neat, clean, scattered cottages-humble antique church with church-yard elms, and crossing hedge-rows-all seen under bright skies, and in good weather:-there is much beauty, as every one will acknowledge, in

32

IN MAN WE SEE THE BEAUTIES OF THE EARTH.

such a scene. But in what does the beauty consist? Not certainly in the mere mixture of colours and forms; for colours more pleasing and lines more graceful (according to any theory of grace that may be preferred), might be spread upon a board, or a painter's pallet, without engaging the eye to a second glance, or raising the least emotion in the mind; but in the picture of human happiness that is presented to our imaginations and affections, in the visible and unequivocal signs of comfort, and cheerful and peaceful enjoyment, and of that secure and successful industry that ensures it continuance, and of the piety by which it is exalted, and of the simplicity by which it is contrasted with the guilt and fever of a city life; in the images of health and temperance and plenty which it exhibits to every eye, and in the glimpses which it affords to warmer imaginations of the primitive or fabulous times, when man was uncorrupted by luxury and ambition, and of those humble retreats in which we still delight to imagine that love and philosophy may find an unpolluted asylum. At all events, however, it is human feeling that excites our sympathy, and forms the object of our emotions. It is man, and man alone, that we see in the beauties of the earth which he inhabits; or, if a more sensitive and extended sympathy connect us with the lower families of animated nature, and make us rejoice with the lambs that bleat on the uplands, or the cattle that ruminate in the valley, or even with the living plants that drink the bright sun and the balmy air it is still the idea of enjoyment of feelings that animate the existence of sentient beings, that calls forth all our emotions, and is the parent of all the beauty with which we proceed to invest the inanimate creation around us.

Instead of this quiet and tame English landscape, let us now take a Welsh or a Highland scene, and see whether its beauties will admit of being explained on the same principle. Here we shall have lofty mountains, and rocky and lonely recesses,-tufted woods hung over precipices,-lakes intersected with castled promontories, -ample solitudes of unploughed and untrodden valleys, nameless and gigantic ruins,---and mountain echoes repeating the scream of the eagle and the roar of the cataract. This, too, is beautiful; and to those who can interpret the language it speaks, far more beautiful than the prosperous scene with which we have contrasted it. Yet, lonely as it is, it is to the recollection of man and of human feelings that its beauty also is owing. The mere forms and colours that compose its visible appearance, are no more capable of exciting any emotion in the mind, than the forms and colours of a Turkey carpet. It is sympathy with the present or the past, or the imaginary inhabitants of such a region, that alone gives it either interest or beauty; and the delight of those who behold it, will always be found to be in exact proportion to the force of their imaginations, and the warmth of their social affections. The leading impressions here, are those of romantic seclusion and primeval sim

plicity; lovers sequestered in these blissful solitudes, 'from towns and toils remote,' and rustic poets and philosophers communing with nature, at a distance from the low pursuits and selfish malignity of ordinary mortals; then is the sublime impression of the mighty power which piled the massive cliffs upon each other, and rent the mountains asunder, and scattered their giant fragments at their base; and all the images connected with the monuments of ancient magnificence and extinguished hostility, the feuds, and the combats, and the triumphs of its wild and primitive inhabitants, contrasted with the stillness and desolation of the scenes where they lie interred; and the romantic ideas attached to their ancient traditions, and the peculiarities of their present life, their wild and enthusiastic poetry, their gloomy superstitions, their attachment to their chiefs, the dangers and the hardships and enjoyments of their lonely huntings and fishings, their pastoral shieling on the mountains in summer, and the tales and the sports that amuse the little groups that are frozen into their vast and trackless valleys in the winter. Add to all this, the traces of vast and obscure antiquity that are impressed on the language and the habits of the people, and on the cliffs, and caves, and gulfy torrents of the land; and the solemn and touching reflection, perpetually recurring, of the weakness and insignificance of perishable man, whose generations thus pass away into oblivion, with all their toils and ambition, while nature holds on her unvarying course, and pours out her streams, and renews her forests, with undecaying activity, regardless of the fate of her proud and perishable sovereign.

We have said enough, we believe, to let our readers understand what we mean by external objects being the natural signs or concomitants of human sympathies or emotions. Yet we cannot refrain from adding one other illustration, and asking on what other principle we can account for the beauty of spring? Winter has shades as deep, and colours as brilliant; and the great forms of nature are substantially the same through all the revolutions of the year.

We shall seek in vain, therefore, for the sources of that 'vernal delight and joy' which subject all finer spirits to an annual intoxication, and strike home the sense of beauty even to hearts that seem proof against it under all other aspects. And it is not among the dead, but among the living, that this beauty originates. It is the renovation of life and of joy to all animated beings, that constitutes this great jubilee of nature; the young of animals bursting into existence; the simple and universal pleasures which are diffused by the mere temperature of the air, and the profusion of sustenance; the pairing of birds; the cheerful resumption of rustic toils; the great alleviation of all the miseries of poverty and sickness; our sympathy with the young life; and the promise and the hazards of the vegetable creation; the solemn, yet cheering, impression of the constancy of

34 PERCEPTION OF BEAUTY DEPENDANT ON OPPORTUNITIES.

nature to her great periods of renovation; and the hopes that dart spontaneously forward with the new circle of exertions and enjoyments that is opened up by her hand and her example. Such are some of the conceptions that are forced upon us by the appearances of returning spring; and that seem to account for the emotions of de-light with which these appearances are hailed by every mind endowed with any degree of sensibility, somewhat better than the brightness of the colours, or the agreebleness of the smells that are then presented

to our senses.

They are kindred conceptions that constitute the beauty of childhood. The forms and colours that are peculiar to that age, are not necessarily or absolutely beautiful in themselves; for, in a grown person, the same forms and colours would be either ludicrous or disgusting. It is their indestructible connection with the engaging ideas of innocence, of careless gaiety, of suspecting confidence; made still more tender and attractive by the recollection of helplessness, and blameless and happy ignorance of the anxious affection that watches over all their ways; and the hopes and fears that seek to pierce futurity, for those who have neither fears nor cares nor anxieties for themselves.

These few illustrations will probably be sufficient to give our readers a general conception of the character and grounds of that theory of beauty which we think affords the only true or consistent account of its nature. They are all examples, it will be observed, of the first and most important connection which we think may be established between external objects and the sentiments or emotions of the mind; or cases in which the visible phenomena are the natural and universal accompaniments of the emotion, in some degree, in the breast of every beholder. If the tenor of these illustrations has been such as to make any impression in favour of the general theory, we conceive that it must be very greatly confirmed by the slightest consideration of the second class of cases, or those in which the external object is not the natural and necessary, but only the occasional or accidental concomitant of the emotion which it recalls. In the former instances, some conception of beauty seems to be inseparable from the appearance of the objects; and being impressed, in some degree, upon all persons to whom they are presented, there is evidently room for insinuating that it is an independent and intrinsic quality of their nature; and does not arise from association with anything else. In the instances, however, in which we are now to allude, this perception of beauty is not universal, but entirely dependant upon the opportunities which each individual has had to associate ideas of emotion with the object to which it is ascribed; the same thing appearing beautiful to those who have been exposed to the influence of such associations, and indifferent to those who have not. Such instances, therefore, really

afford experimentum crucis to the truth of the theory in question; nor is it easy to conceive any more complete evidence, both that there is no such thing as absolute or intrinsic beauty, and that it depends altogether on those associations with which it is thus found to come and to disappear.

The accidental or arbitrary relations that may thus be established between natural sympathies or emotions and external objects, may be either such as occur to whole classes of men, or are confined to particular individuals. Among the former, those that apply to different nations or races of men, are the most important and remarkable; and constitute the basis of those peculiarities by which national tastes are distinguished. Take again, for example, the instance of female beauty, and think what different and inconsistent standards would be fixed for it in the different regions of the world; in Africa, in Asia, and in Europe, in Tartary and in Greece, in Lapland, Patagonia, and Circassia. If there was anything absolutely or intrinsically beautiful in any of the forms thus distinguished, it is inconceiveable that men should differ so outrageously in their conceptions of it. If beauty was a real and independent quality, it seems impossible that it should be distinctly and clearly felt by one set of persons, where another set, altogether as sensitive, could see nothing but its opposite. And if it were actually and inseparably attached to certain forms, colours, or proportions, it must appear utterly inexplicable that it should be felt and perceived in the most opposite forms and proportion, in objects of the same description. On the other hand, if all beauty consist in reminding us of certain natural sympathies and objects of emotion, it is easy to perceive how the most different forms should be felt to be equally beautiful. If female beauty, for instance, consist in the visible signs and expressions of youth and health, and of gentleness, vivacity, and kindness, then it will necessarily happen, that the forms, and colours, and proportions, which nature may have connected with those qualities, in the different climates or regions of the world, will all appear equally beautiful to those who have been accustomed to recognise them as the signs of such qualities; while they will be respectively indifferent to those who have not learned to interpret them in this sense, and displeasing to those whom experience has led to consider them as the signs of opposite qualities. The case is the same, though perhaps to a smaller degree, as to the peculiarity of national taste in other particulars.

The style of dress and architecture in every nation, if not adopted from mere want of skill, or penury of materials, always appears beautiful to the natives, and somewhat monstrous and absurd to foreigners. And the general character and aspect of their landscape, in like manner, if not associated with substantial evils and inconveniences, always appears more beautiful and enchanting than the scenery of any other