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rious instances; but I cannnot help flattering myself with the belief, that the principle itself will bear examination.

-Some objections to it, which I can easily anticipate, may perhaps be obviated in part by the following re

marks.

Although I have endeavoured to shew that our first notions of Beauty are derived from colours, it neither follows, that, in those complex ideas of the Beautiful which we are afterwards led to form in the progress of our experience, this quality must necessarily enter as a component part; nor, where it does so enter, that its effects must necessarily predominate over that of all the others. On the contrary, it may be easily conceived, in what manner its effect comes to be gradually supplanted by those pleasures of a higher cast, with which it is combined; while, at the same time, we continue to apply to the joint result, the language which this now subordinate, and seemingly unessential ingredient, originally suggested. It is by a process somewhat similar, that the mental attrac tions of a beautiful woman supplant those of her person in the heart of her lover; and that, when the former have the good fortune to survive the latter, they appropriate to themselves, by an imperceptible metaphor, that language, which, in its literal sense, has ceased to have a meaning. In this case, a very pleasing arrangement of nature is exhibited; the qualities of Mind which insensibly stole, in the first instance, those flattering epithets which are descriptive of a fair exterior, now restoring their borrowed embellishments, and keeping alive, in the eye of conju gal affection, that Beauty which has long perished to every other.

The progress just remarked, in the instance of Colours, admits of an easy and complete illustration, in the gradual transference of the painter's admiration, (in proportion as his taste is exercised and improved) from the merely organical charms of his art, to its sublimer beauties. It is not that he is less delighted with beautiful colouring than before; but because his Imagination can easily supply its absence, when excellencies of a superior order engage his attention. It is for the same reason, that a masterly sketch with chalk, or with a pencil, gives, to a practised eye, a pleasure to which nothing could be added by the hand of a common artist; and that the relics of ancient statuary, which are beheld with comparative indifference by the vulgar of all countries, are surveyed by men of cultivated taste with still greater rapture, than the forms which live on the glowing canvas of the painter.

Hence too it happens, that, in the progress of Taste, the word Beautiful comes to be more peculiarly appropriated (at least by critics and philosophers) to Beauty in its most complicated and impressive form. In this sense we plainly understand it, when we speak of analysing beauty. To Colour, and to the other simple elements which enter into its composition, although we may still, with the most unexceptionable propriety, apply this epithet, we more commonly (as far as I am able to judge) apply the epithet pleasing, or some equivalent expres

sion.

I shall only remark farther, on this head, that, in the imitative arts, the most beautiful colours, when they are

See Note (X).

out of place, or when they do not harmonize with each other, produce an effect which is peculiarly offensive; and that, in articles of dress or of furniture, a passion for gaudy decoration is justly regarded as the symptom of a taste for the Beautiful, which is destined never to pass the first stage of infancy.

CHAPTER SEVENTH.

CONTINUATION OF THE SUBJECT.-OBJECTIONS TO A THEORY OF BEAUTY PROPOSED BY FATHER BUFFIER AND SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.

BEFORE I conclude these disquisitions concerning the influence of Association on our ideas of the Beautiful, I think it proper to take some notice of a theory upon the subject, adopted by two very eminent men, Father Buffier and Sir Joshua Reynolds, according to which we are taught, that "the effect of Beauty depends on Habit "alone; the most customary form in each species of "things being invariably the most beautiful."

"A beautiful nose" for example, (to borrow Mr. Smith's short, but masterly illustration of Buffier's principle)" is one that is neither very long nor very short; "neither very straight nor very crooked; but a sort of "middle among all these extremes, and less different "from any one of them, than all of them are from one "another. It is the form which nature seems to have aimed at in them all; which, however she deviates from "in a great variety of ways, and very rarely hits exactly, "but to which all these deviations still bear a very strong resemblance.In each species of creatures, "what is most beautiful bears the strongest characters of "the general fabric of the species, and has the strongest "resemblance to the greater part of the individuals with

"which it is classed. Monsters, on the contrary, or what "is perfectly deformed, are always most singular and odd, and have the least resemblance to the generality “of that species to which they belong. And thus, the beauty of each species, though, in one sense, the rarest "of all things, because few individuals hit the middle "form exactly, yet in another, is the most common, be"cause all the deviations from it resemble it more than 'they resemble one another."*

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The same opinion has been since stated, in much stronger and more explicit terms, by a still higher authority than Buffier,-Sir Joshua Reynolds.

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Every species" (he observes)" of the animal as well as the vegetable creation, may be said to have a fixed "or determinate form, towards which Nature is continu

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ally inclining, like various lines terminating in the 'centre; and, as these lines all cross the centre, though

only one passes through any other point, so it will be "found, that perfect beauty is oftener produced by na"ture than deformity: I do not mean than deformity in general, but than any one kind of deformity. To in"stance, in a particular part of a feature, the line that "forms the ridge of the nose is beautiful when it is 'straight. This, then, is the central form, which is oftener "found than either concave, convex, or any other ir. "regular form that shall be proposed. As we are then

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more accustomed to beauty than to deformity, we may "conclude that to be the reason why we approve and ad"mire it, as we approve and admire customs and fashions "of dress for no other reason than that we are used to

*Theory of Moral Sentiments.

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