in some one or other of its forms; and may remember that weariness of mind, which you would gladly have exchanged for weariness of body; and which it is perhaps more difficult to bear with good humour, than many profound griefs;-because it involves, not merely the uneasiness of the uniformity itself, but the greater uneasiness of hope, that is renewed every moment to be every moment disappointed. The change, which we know must come, seems yet never to come. In the case of the supposed journey of a day along one continued avenue, there can be no doubt, that the uniformity of similar trees, at similar distances, would itself be most wearisome. But what we should feel with far more fretfulness, would be the constant disappointment of our expectation that the last tree, which we beheld in the distance, would be the last that was to rise upon us; when tree after tree, as if in mockery of our very patience itself, would still continue to present the same dismal continuity of line.

The great utility of this uneasiness, that arises from the uniformity of impressions, which may even have been originally pleasing, it is surely superfluous for me to point out. Man is formed, not for rest, but for action; and if there were no weariness on a repetition of the past, the most general of all motives to action would be instantly suspended. We act, that is to say, we perform what is new, because we are desirous of some result, which is new; and we are desirous of the new, because the old, which itself was once new, presents to us no longer the same delight. If the old appeared to us, as it once appeared to us, we should rest in it with most indolent content.

Hope, eager Hope, the assassin of our joy,
All present blessings treading under foot,
Is scarce a milder tyrant than Despair.
Possession, why more tasteless than pursuit?
Why is a wish far dearer than a crown ?"*

It is not because Hope treads our present blessings under foot, that they seem to us to have lost their brightness, but it is in a great measure, because they already seem to us to have faded, that we yield to the illusions of that Hope, which promises us continually some blessing more bright and less perishable, from the enjoyment of which it is afterwards to seduce us with a similar deceit.

The diminished pleasure, however, fading into positive uneasiness, which thus arises from uniformity of the past, answers, as we have seen, the most benevolent purposes. It is to our mind, what the corresponding pain of hunger is to our bodily health. It gives an additional excitement, even to the active; and to far the greater number of mankind, it is, perhaps, the only excitement which could rouse them, from the sloth of ease, to those exertions, by which their intellectual and moral powers are, in some degree, at least, more invigorated, or by which, notwithstanding all their indifference to the welfare of others, they are forced to become the unintentional benefactors of that society, to which otherwise they might not have given the labours of a single bodily exertion, or even of a single thought.

After these remarks, on two of our very common emotions, I proceed to that which is next in the order of our arrangement.

"And lo! disclosed in all her smiling pomp,
Where Beauty, onward moving, claims the praise

"Night Thoughts, VII. v. 107-109, and 112, 113.

Her charms inspire.-O, source of all delight,*
O thou, that kindlest, in each human breast,
Love, and the wish of poets, when their tongue
Would teach to other bosoms what so charms

Their own!-Thee, form divine! thee, Beauty, thee,
The regal dome, and thy enlivening ray,
The mossy roofs adore: thou, better Sun!
For ever beamest on the enchanted heart,
Love, and harmonious wonder, and delight
Poetic!-Brightest progeny of Heaven!
How shall I trace thy features! where select
The roseate hues to emulate thy bloom!"t

The emotions of beauty, and the feelings opposed to those of beauty, to which I now proceed, are, next to our moral emotions, the most interesting of the whole class. They are emotions, indeed, which, in their effects, either of vice or virtue, may almost be considered as moral,-being mingled, if not with our own moral actions, at least in our contemplation of the moral actions of others, which we cannot admire, without making them, in some measure, our own, by that desire of imitating them, which, in such a case, it is scarcely possible for us not to feel,—or which, in like manner, we cannot view with disgust and abhorrence, without some strengthening in ourselves of the virtues, that are opposite to the vices which we consider.

Delightful as our emotions of beauty are,-important as they are, in their indirect effects, and universally as they are felt, there is, perhaps, no class of feelings, in treating which so little precision has been employed by philosophers, and on which so little certainty has been attained. It is a very striking, though a quaint remark, of an old French writer, La Chambre, in his treatise on the Characters of the Passions, that beauty has had a sort of double effect, in depriving men of their reason. "The greatest men," says he, "who have felt its effects, have been ignorant of its cause, and we may say, that it has made them lose their reason, both when they have been touched with the charms of it, and when they have attempted to say any thing about that very charm which they felt."

So many, indeed, have been the opinions of philosophers on this subject,— and opinions so very confused, and so very contradictory, that I conceive it safest, to proceed at once to the consideration of the subject itself, without attempting to give you any previous view of the opinions of others with respect to it. I am quite sure, that, if these opinions were exhibited to you in succession, your powers of inquiry would be distracted and oppressed, rather than enlightened or invigorated, and, therefore, would not be in a state very well fitted for prosecuting the investigation, on which you might be called to enter. In questions which relate to objects that cannot be directly submitted to the senses, and that have been thus perplexed by many opposite doctrines and speculations, it is often necessary to endeavour to forget as much as possible what others have thought, and to strive to think as if the opinions of others had been unknown to us. I know no question, in which this temporary forgetfulness could be of more profit than in that on which we

are to enter.

When we speak of the emotion which beauty excites, we speak necessarily of an emotion that is pleasing; for it is only in the case of pleasing emotions that all writers concur in using the name, and only in such cases that the *"O Beauty, source of praise."-Orig.

+ Pleasures of Imagination, B. I. v. 271–3. Second form of the poem, v. 282, 284—7, (from "O, source," to " their own!") First form of the poem, v. 275-282.

VOL. II.

3

name is used, even by the vulgar, in their common phraseology. It is, in truth, only one of the many forms of that joyous delight, which I ranked as one of the elementary feelings to which our emotions are reducible. The pleasure, then, I may remark, in the first place, is one essential circumstance of the emotion.

Another circumstance, which may not seem so obvious, but which I con-⚫ sider as not less constituent of beauty, in that maturer state of the mind, in which alone we are capable of considering it, is that we transfer, in part at least, the delight which we feel, and embody it in the object which excited it, whatever that object may have been, combining it at least partially with our very conception of the object, as beautiful,—much in the same way as we invest external forms, with the colours which exist as feelings of our own mind, or in our vague conception; and of the sapid or odoriferous substances, that are gratifying to our luxury, we consider as almost present in them, and permanent, some part of the very delight which they afford. I know well, that, philosophically, we consider these sapid and odoriferous substances, merely as the unknown causes of our sensations of sweetness and fragrance; but I have little doubt, at the same time, that it is only philosophically we do consider them, and that, while we smell a rose, without thinking of our philosophy, we do truly consider the fragrance, which we are at the moment enjoying, or at least a charm which involves a sort of shadowy resemblance of that peculiar species of delight, to be floating around that beautiful flower, as if existing there, independently of our feeling. We do not, indeed, think of the sensation of fragrance as existing without, for if we characterized it as a sensation, this very judgment would imply a sort of philosophizing on its nature, which is far from taking place in such a moment. But, without regarding it as a sensation, and enjoying merely the actual feeling of the moment, we incorporate the charm, as it were, with the colours of the rose, with as little intention of forming this combination, and even with as little consciousness that any such combination is taking place, as when, in vision, we invest the external hardness, the mere feeling of gentle and limited resistance, which the rosebud gives us as an object of touch, or of muscular compression, with the colours, which are at the moment arising from affections of a different organ. In the case of fragrance, it is more easy for us, indeed, to separate the sensation from the external form with which we combine it, and to imagine a rose without odour, than, in the case of vision, to separate the form and hue that mingle as if in one sensation; because there are many objects which we touch, that excite in us no sensations of fragrance, and no objects of touch which do not excite in us some sensations of colour. The coexistence is, therefore, more uniform, and the subsequent suggestions consequently more uniform and indissoluble in the one case than in the other. It is much easier for us, accordingly, to persuade those who have never read, or discoursed, or thought, on such subjects, that the feelings of smell and taste are not inherent in their objects, than to persuade them that the actual colours, which form their sensations of vision, are not spread over the surfaces of external things. But the actual investment of external things with the feelings of our own mind, does take place in our sensitive references to objects without; and in some cases, as in those of vision, constitutes a union so close, that it is impossible even for our philosophy to break the union while the sensation continues. We know well, when we open our eyes, that whatever affects our eyes, is within the

small compass of their orbit; and yet we cannot look for a single moment, without spreading what we thus visually feel over whole miles of landscape.

Still, I must repeat, not the slightest doubt is philosophically entertained by those, who, when they open their eyes, yield like the vulgar to the temporary illusion that the colours, thus supposed to be spread over the external scenery, are truly feelings of the mind, of which the external objects, or rather the rays of light that come from them, are merely the unknown causes. When questioned on the subject of vision, we state this opinion with confidence, and even with astonishment, that our opinion on the subject, in the present age of philosophy, should be doubted by him who has taken the superfluous trouble of putting such a question. At the very moment, probably, at which we give our answer, we have our eyes fixed on him, to whom we address it. His complexion, his dress, are regarded by us as external colours, and we are practically, at the very moment, therefore, belying the very opinion which we profess, and in speculation truly profess, to hold.

These remarks show sufficiently the distinction of our speculative limitation of our feelings to mind, as the only subject of feeling, and our practical diffusion of these very feelings over matter, which, by its nature, is incapable of being the subject of any feeling; and they show, that it is very possible for the same mind to combine both, or rather, that there is no individual, who has accurately made the distinction, that does not, in almost every moment of his life, and certainly in every moment of vision,-go through that very process of spiritualizing matter, or of diffusing over matter his own sensations, which, in his speculations, appear to him to involve an absolute contradiction.

It is not enough, therefore, to urge, in disproof of any diffusion of our inental feelings over material things, that our feelings are affections of mind, and cannot be affections of matter; since this would be to disprove a fact, which certainly in vision, and, as I conceive, in some degree in our other senses also, is continually taking place, notwithstanding the supposed demonstration of its impossibility.

To apply these remarks, however, to our particular subject.-Beauty, I have said, is necessarily an emotion that is pleasing, and it is an emotion which we diffuse, and combine with our conception of the object that may have excited it. These two circumstances, the pleasing nature of the emotion itself, and the identification of it with the object that excites it, are essential to it, in those years in which alone it can be an object of reflection; and are, as I conceive, the only circumstances that are essential to it, in all its varieties, and in whatever way the emotion itself may be produced. It is true, indeed, that when questioned, precisely as in the case of simple vision, whether we think that the emotion of beauty is a state or affection of matter, we should have no hesitation in affirming, instantly, that it is a state of the mind, and is absolutely incapable of existing in any substance that is purely material. All this we should say with confidence, as we say with confidence that colour is an affection of the mind, and only an affection of the mind. Yet still, as in the case of colour, the temporary diffusion of our own feeling over the external objects would take place as before. The beauty, as truly felt, and as reasoned upon, would be in our mind; the beauty, as considered by us at the time of the feeling, would be a delight that seemed to float over the object without, the object which we, therefore, term beautiful, as we term certain other objects red or green--not the mere unknown causes of the feelings, which we

term redness, or greenness, or beauty, but objects that are red, and green, and beautiful. Even at the time of the diffusion, however, we do not say, or even think, that we diffuse the emotion of beauty any more than we say or think that we diffuse the sensations of colour; for this, as I have said, would be to have philosophized on the nature of the feelings or states of a substantial mind; but without any thought of the colours as sensations, or of the beauty as an emotion, we feel them as in the objects that excite them, that is to say, we reflect them from ourselves on the objects. The diffusion may be temporary, indeed, and depend on the actual presence of the object, but still the temporary diffusion does take place; and while the object is before us, it is as little possible for us not to regard it, as permanently beautiful, though no eye were ever to behold it, as it would be for us to regard its colour, as fading the very moment in which we close our eye. Beauty, then, is a pleasing emotion, and a delight which we feel, as if diffused over the object which

excites it.

I shall proceed further in my inquiry in my next Lecture

LECTURE LIV.

OF IMMEDIATE EMOTIONS, NOT NECESSARILY INVOLVING ANY MORAL FEELING.-3. BEAUTY AND ITS OPPOSITE, CONTINUED.

GENTLEMEN, the latter part of my Lecture, yesterday, was employed in considering one of the most interesting of our emotions, that which constitutes the charm of Beauty,-an emotion, which every one must have felt sufficiently to understand, at the mere mention of the name, what it is, which is the subject of inquiry, and which, notwithstanding, when we endeavour to explain to others what we feel, no two individuals probably would define by

the same terms.

Of an emotion, which is so delightful, and so universal, and, by a singular, and almost contradictory character of thought, at once so clearly felt, and so obscurely comprehended, many theories, as might well be supposed, have been formed by philosophers. If the accurate knowledge of a subject bear any necessary proportion to the number of opinions, with respect to it, that have been stated and canvassed, and the labour and ability of those who have advanced their own theories, or examined the theories of others, there could now be scarcely any more doubt, as to the nature of what is beautiful, than as to any property of a circle or a triangle, which geometricians have demonstrated.

Such a proportion, however, unfortunately does not hold. There are subjects, which as little grow clearer, by a comparison of many opinions with respect to them, as the waters of a turbid lake grow clearer, by being frequently dashed together, when all that can be effected, by the agitation, is to darken them the more.

In such a case, the plan most prudent, is to let the waters rest, before we attempt to discover what is at the bottom,-or, to speak without a metaphor, where there is so much confusion and perplexity, from opposite opinions, it is often of great advantage to regard the subject, if we can so regard it, with