beauties and blemishes that are hidden from the common eye, which perceives only what is in some degree bold and palpable; (3) Correctness, implying agreement with the general consent of an age, and, still more, of successive ages. The second leans more to feeling, and is manifested chiefly in discerning latent beauty and true merit; the third leans more to reason, is comparative, discriminative, and respects chiefly the improvement of taste through its connection with the understanding. The first may be said to comprehend both. A highly refined, a true taste, makes use of the senses, but does not rest in them. The main thing is the design, the intelligible form, not construable to sense, but addressing itself solely to the inward eye.

It will be seen at once that the scientific and rhetorical sense of taste is different from that of common acceptation. In fact, the term has a diversity of meanings, three of which are to be particularly noted. When a person is said to have a taste for a certain pursuit, occupation, amusement or study, it is really meant that he has a fondness or inclination for it, and either of these words would be more precise. When he is said to have a taste for the beautiful, it is meant that he has a lively susceptibility for it. When he is said to have good taste in objects of beauty, it is meant that he judges readily and accurately upon such objects as awaken that susceptibility.

The application of taste to the several fine arts is criticism, whose office is to distinguish the beautiful from its opposite in every performance; and from particular instances (such as come nearest to the standard) to ascend to general principles concerning the various kinds of beauty in works of genius. The Fine Arts are: (1) Architecture, in which the realization of beauty or subjective idea is subordinate to an end of outward utility; (2) Landscape-gardening, which comprehends, primarily, the

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

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,

A

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. What is that one

property that they have in common - what is beauty? According to Hume, it is subjective - 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.'

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