and pains which they experience. These epithets, too, will naturally be borrowed from other more familiar feelings, to which they bear, or are conceived to bear some resemblance; and hence a peculiar vagueness and looseness in the language we use on all such subjects, and a variety in the established modes of expression, of which it is seldom possible to give a satisfactory explanation.

2. But although by far the greater part of the transitive or derivative applications of words depend on casual and unaccountable caprices of the feelings or of the fancy, there are certain cases in which they open a very interesting field of philosophical speculation. Such are those, in which an analogous transference of the corresponding term may be remarked universally, or very generally, in other languages; and in which, of course, the uniformity of the result must be ascribed to the essential principles of the human frame. Even in such cases, however, it will by no means be always found, on examination, that the various applications of the same term have arisen from any common quality, or qualities, in the objects to which they relate. In the greater number of instances, they may be traced to some natural and universal associations of ideas, founded in the common faculties, common organs, and common condition of the human race; and an attempt to investigate by what particular process this uniform result has been brought about, on so great a variety of occasions, while it has no tendency to involve us in the unintelligible abstractions of the schools, can scarcely fail to throw some new lights on the history of the human mind.

I shall only add, at present, upon this preliminary topic, that, according to the different degrees of intimacy and of strength in the associations on which the transitions of language are founded, very different effects may be expected to arise. Where the association is

slight and casual, the several meanings will remain distinct from each other, and will often, in process of time, assume the appearance of capricious varieties in the use of the same arbitrary sign. Where the association is so natural and habitual, as to become virtually indissoluble, 25

VOL. IV.

the transitive meanings will coalesce into one complex conception; and every new transition will became a more comprehensive generalization of the term in question.

With these views, I now proceed to offer a few observations on the successive generalizations of that word of which it is the chief object of this Essay to illustrate the import. In doing so, I would by no means be understood to aim at any new theory on the subject; but only to point out what seems to me to be the true plan on which it ought to be studied. If, in the course of this attempt, I shall be allowed to have struck into the right path, and to have suggested some useful hints to my successors, I shall feel but little solicitude about the criticisms to which I may expose myself, by the opinions I am to hazard on incidental or collateral questions, not essentially connected with my general design.

CHAPTER SECOND.

PROGRESSIVE GENERALIZATIONS OF THE WORD BEAUTY, RESULTING FROM THE NATURAL PROGRESS OF THE MIND.-BEAUTY OF COLORS-OF FORMS-OF MOTION.-COMBINATIONS OF THESE.-UNIFORMITY WORKS OF ART.-BEAUTY OF NATURE.

IN

NOTWITHSTANDING the great variety of qualities, physical, intellectual, and moral, to which the word beauty is applicable, I believe it will be admitted, that, in its primitive and most general acceptation, it refers to objects of sight. As the epithets sweet and delicious literally denote what is pleasing to the palate, and harmonious what is pleasing to the ear; as the epithets soft and warm denote certain qualities that are pleasing in objects of touch or of feeling;-so the epithet beautiful literally denotes what is pleasing to the eye. All these epithets, too, it is worthy of remark, are applied transitively to the perceptions of other senses. We speak of sweet and of soft sounds; of warm, of delicious, and of harmonious coloring, with as little impropriety, as of a beautiful voice, or of a beautiful piece of music. Mr. Burke, himself, has somewhere spoken of the soft green of the soul. If the transitive applications of the word beauty be more numerous and more heterogeneous than those of the words sweetness, softness, and harmony, is it not probable that some account of this peculiarity may be derived from the comparative multiplicity of those perceptions of which the eye is the common organ? Such, accordingly, is the very simple principle on which the following speculations proceed; and which it is the chief aim of these speculations to establish. In prosecuting the subject, however, I shall not fetter myself by any regular plan, but shall readily give way to whatever discussions may naturally arise, either from my own conclusions, or from the remarks I may be led to offer on the theories of others.

The first ideas of beauty formed by the mind, are, in all probability, derived from colors.* Long before in

* It is, accordingly, upon this assumption that I proceed in tracing the progressive

fants receive any pleasures from the beauties of form or of motion, (both of which require, for their perception, a certain effort of attention and of thought) their eye may be caught and delighted with brilliant coloring, or with splendid illumination. I am inclined, too, to suspect, that in the judgment of a peasant, this ingredient of beauty predominates over every other, even in his estimate of the perfections of the female form; * and, in the inanimate creation, there seems to be little else which he beholds with any rapture. It is, accordingly, from the effect produced by the rich painting of the clouds, when gilded by the setting sun, that Akenside infers the existence of the seeds of taste, where it is impossible to trace them to any hand but that of nature.

"Ask the swain

Who journeys homewards from a summer-day's
Long labor, why, forgetful of his toils,

And due repose, he loiters to behold

The sunshine gleaming, as through amber clouds,
O'er all the western sky; full soon, I ween,

His rude expression, and untutored airs,
Beyond the power of language, will unfold
The form of beauty smiling at his heart."

Nor is it only in the judgment of the infant or of the peasant, that colors rank high among the constituents of the beautiful. The spectacle alluded to by Akenside, in the foregoing lines, as it forms the most pleasing of any to the untutored mind, so it continues, after the experience of a life spent in the cultivation of taste, to retain its undiminished attractions: I should rather say, retains all its first attractions, heightened by many stronger ones of a moral nature.

generalizations of these ideas; but the intelligent reader will immediately perceive, that this supposition is not essentially necessary to my argument. Supposing the first ideas of beauty to be derived from forms, the general conclusions which I wish to establish would have been precisely the same. In the case of a blind man, whatever notions he attaches to the word beautiful (which I believe to be very different from ours) must necessarily originate in the perception of such forms or shapes as are agreeable to his sense of touch; combined, perhaps, with the grateful sensations connected with softness, smoothness, and warmth. If the view of the subject which has occurred to me be just, an easy explanation may be deduced from it, of the correct and consistent use of poetical language, in speaking of objects of sight, by such a writer as the late Dr. Blacklock.

*The opinion of Shenstone, on a point of this sort, is of some weight. "It is probable," he observes, " that a clown would require more color in his Chloe's face than a courtier."

"HIM have we seen, the greenwood side along, As o'er the heath we hied, our labor done, Oft as the wood-lark piped his evening song, With wishful eye pursue the setting sun.' Such is one of the characteristical features in a portrait, sketched for himself, by the exquisite pencil of Gray; presenting an interesting counterpart to what he has elsewhere said of the poetical visions which delighted his childhood.

"Oft before his infant eye would run Such forms as glitter in the muse's ray, With orient hues.'

"Among the several kinds of beauty," says Mr. Addison, "the eye takes most delight in colors. We nowhere meet with a more glorious or pleasing show in nature than what appears in the heavens, at the rising and setting of the sun, which is wholly made up of those different stains of light, that show themselves in clouds of a different situation. For this reason we find the poets, who are always addressing themselves to the imagination, borrowing more of their epithets from colors than from any other topic." *

From the admiration of colors, the eye gradually advances to that of forms; beginning first with such as are most obviously regular. Hence the pleasure which children, almost without exception, express, when they see gardens laid out after the Dutch manner; and hence the justness of the epithet childish or puerile, which is commonly employed to characterize this species of taste; one of the earliest stages of its progress both in individuals and in nations.

J

When in addition to the pleasures connected with colors, external objects present those which arise from certain modifications of form, the same name will be naturally applied to both the causes of the mixed emotion. The emotion appears, in point of fact, to our consciousness, simple and uncompounded, no person being able to say, while it is felt, how much of the effect is to be ascribed to either cause, in preference to the

*Spectator, No. 412.