mediate pleasure which they communicate to the organ, have a tendency to arrest the progress of our thoughts, and to engage the whole of our attention to themselves.

It is scarcely necessary to add, that a great part of what has just been observed is applicable to the art of embellishing real scenery, as well as to the compositions of the painter. Many of Mr. Price's suggestions for giving a picturesque character to grounds and to buildings, turn upon circumstances which owe their whole effect to their poetical expression.

When these different considerations are combined together, there will not, I apprehend, appear to be any sound foundation for distinguishing the Picturesque from the Beautiful, as a quality essentially different; the pleasure we receive from the former, resolving either into that arising from the conception or imagination of understood beauties, or into the accessory pleasures excited in the mind by means of the associating principle.1

On other occasions, the distinction stated by Mr. Price between the Picturesque and the Beautiful coincides with the distinction between Natural and Artificial Beauty; and the rules he gives for producing the Picturesque resolve into the old precept of employing art to conceal her own operations. In these, as indeed in all other cases, his rules (as far as I am able to judge) are the result of exquisite taste, and evince habits of the nicest and most discriminating observation; and it is only to be regretted that he had not been more fortunate in the choice, and more consistent in the use of his phraseology.2

Notwithstanding, however, these occasional variations in his interpretation of the word Picturesque, the prevailing idea which he annexes to it, throughout his work, coincides very nearly with the definition of Mr. Gilpin. In proof of this, it is sufficient to mention, that, in his title-page, what he professes to

[See Note X, Addition.]

In some of the passages which I allude to at present, the word picturesque seems to be synonymous with romantic, as formerly applied by our English

writers to wild scenery. Milton uses
grotesque nearly in the same sense :-

"The champaign head
Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides
With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild,
Access deny'd."

treat of is, the advantages to be derived from the study of paintings in improving real landscape; a circumstance which shows plainly that it was this notion of the Picturesque which was predominant in his mind while he was employed in the composition. The truth of the doctrine which he thus announces as his principal subject, I am by no means disposed to dispute; but some limitations of it occur to me as so indispensably necessary, that I shall slightly touch upon one or two of the most important, before I conclude this chapter.

That the Picturesque (according to Mr. Gilpin's definition of it) does not always coincide with what the eye pronounces to be Beautiful in the reality, has been often observed; and is, indeed, an obvious consequence of the limited powers of painting, and of the limited range of objects which the artist can present to the eye at once. No pencil can convey a pleasure bearing any resemblance to that which we receive, when we enjoy, from a commanding eminence, an extensive prospect of a rich champaign country, or a boundless view of the ocean; nor can it copy, with any success, many other of the most engaging aspects of nature. The painter, accordingly, when he attempts a portrait of real landscape, is obliged to seize such points of view as are adapted to the circumscribed resources of his art; and, in his observation of Nature, is unavoidably led to the study of what Mr. Gilpin calls picturesque effect. By these habits of study, he cannot fail to acquire a new interest in the beautiful objects he meets with; a critical discrimination in his perceptions, unknown to common spectators; and a sensibility to many pleasing details, which to them are invisible. "Quàm multa vident pictores," says Cicero, in the words of Mr. Price's motto, ❝in umbris et in eminentia quæ nos non videmus!"* Nor is this all. To the pleasure arising from what is presented to his senses, is superadded that which he anticipates from the exercise of his own art; or those which are revived in his memory,

by the resemblance of what he sees to the compositions of his favourite masters. The most trifling accident of scenery, it is evident, (at least the most trifling to an unskilled eye,) may thus possess, in his estimation, a value superior to that which he ascribes to beauties of a far higher order; his imagination, in some cases, filling up the picture where nature has but faintly sketched the outline; in other cases, the reality borrowing a charm from some associated painting,-as, in the judgment of the multitude, paintings borrow their principal charm from associated realities.

While the studies of the painter contribute, in this manner, to create a relish for the beautiful picturesque, is there no danger that they may produce, in a limited mind, habits of inattention or of indifference to those natural beauties which defy the imitation of the pencil; and that his taste may, in time, become circumscribed, like the canvass upon which he works? I think I have perceived, in some artists and connoisseurs, examples of this, within the narrow circle of my own. observation. In such cases, we might almost be tempted to reverse the question in Mr. Price's motto;-"Quàm multa videmus nos quæ pictores non vident !"

As to the application of the knowledge thus acquired from the study of paintings to the improvement of natural landscape, I have no doubt that, to a superior understanding and taste, like those of Mr. Price, it may often suggest very useful hints; but if recognised as the standard to which the ultimate appeal is to be made, it would infallibly cover the face of the country with a new and systematical species of affectation, not less remote than that of Brown from the style of gardening which he wishes to recommend.

To this it may be added, that, as an object which is offensive in the reality may please in painting; so many things which would offend in painting, may yet please in the reality. If, in some respects, therefore, the study of painting be a useful auxiliary in the art of creating landscape; in others there is, at least, a possibility that it may lead the judgment astray, or impose unnecessary fetters on an inventive imagination.

I have only to remark farther, that in laying out grounds, still more perhaps than in any other of the fine arts, the primary object of a good taste is, not to please the connoisseur, but to please the enlightened admirer and lover of nature. The perfection of all these arts is undoubtedly to give pleasure to both; as they always will, and must do, when the taste of the connoisseur is guided by good sense and philosophy. Pliny justly considered it as the highest praise he could bestow on the exquisite beauties of a Corinthian antique, when he sums up his description of them by observing,-" Talia denique omnia, ut possint artificum oculos tenere, delectare imperitorum." Objects, of whatever kind, which please the connoisseur alone, prove only that there is something fundamentally wrong in the principles upon which he judges; and most of all do they authorize this conclusion, when Nature herself is the subject upon which the artist is to operate, and where the chief glory of Art is to work unseen.

Upon the whole, let Painting be allowed its due praise in quickening our attention to the beauties of Nature; in multiplying our resources for their further embellishment; and in holding up a standard, from age to age, to correct the caprices of fashionable innovations; but let our Taste for these beauties be chiefly formed on the study of Nature herself;—nor let us ever forget so far what is due to her indisputable and salutary prerogative, as to attempt an encroachment upon it by laws, which derive the whole of their validity from her own sanction.1

1 "I shall add no more to what I have here offered, than that music, architecture, and painting, as well as poetry and oratory, are to deduce their laws and rules from the general sense

and taste of mankind, and not from the principles of these arts themselves; or, in other words, the Taste is not to conform to the Art, but the Art to the Taste."-Spectator, No. 29.

VOL. V.

CHAPTER VI.

OF THE APPLICATION OF THE THEORY OF ASSOCIATION TO

BEAUTY.

- FARTHER GENERALIZATIONS OF THIS WORD, IN CONSEQUENCE OF THE INFLUENCE OF THE

PRINCIPLE.

ASSOCIATING

In the foregoing remarks on Beauty, although I have occasionally alluded to the Association of Ideas, I have avoided all discussion with respect to the extent of its influence. It is necessary for me, however, now to consider, at some length, the effects of a principle which, in the opinion of many philosophers, furnishes a complete explanation of all the phenomena which have been under our consideration; and which must be acknowledged, even by those who do not go so far, to be deeply concerned in the production of most of them.

I had occasion to observe, in a former publication, that the theory which resolves the whole effect of beautiful objects into Association, must necessarily involve that species of paralogism, to which logicians give the name of reasoning in a circle. It is the province of Association to impart to one thing the agreeable or the disagreeable effect of another; but Association can never account for the origin of a class of pleasures different in kind from all the others we know. If there was nothing originally and intrinsically pleasing or beautiful, the associating principle would have no materials on which it could operate.

Among the writers who have attempted to illustrate the influence of Association on our judgments concerning the Beautiful, I do not know of any who seem to have been com