kinds of beauty are melancholy, and some are cheerful -some humble and some simple-and others commanding and magnificent: and we are moved accordingly, by the contemplation of all those varied species, either to pensive tenderness-to love, pity, and regret—or to gay and airy imaginations—or to still and tranquil thought-or to admiration, humility, and awe. But if it be true, that the emotions which we receive from beauty are thus various in themselves, and that they partake thus largely of the character of other emotions, why should we not conclude that they are but modifications of those more familiar affections, and that the beauty which we impute to external objects, is nothing more than their power of reflecting these several inward affections. This, accordingly, is the theory adopted by Mr Alison, and made out by him on the most satisfactory evidence.

In explaining this, it will be necessary to attend to an important fact connected with human nature,—we mean that the love of sensation is its ruling appetite. So much so, indeed, that many sensations, in which the painful seems greatly to predominate, are sought for with avidity, and recollected with interest, even in our own persons. All sensations that are not absolutely indifferent, and which are, at the same time, either agreeable when experienced by ourselves, or attractive when contemplated by others, may form the foundation of the emotions of sublimity or beauty. And every feeling which it is agreeable to experience, to recall, or to witness, may become the source of beauty in external objects, when it is so connected with them that their appearance reminds us of that feeling. Now, we know, from our own daily experience and observation, that it is agreeable to us to recall our own past pleasurable sensations, or to be enabled to form a lively conception of the pleasurable sensations of other men, or even of

sentient beings of any description. We also know, that there is a certain delight in the remembrance of our past emotions, even though these emotions might have been attended with great pain at the time they were originally excited, provided such emotions be not forced too rudely on the mind, and that they are rendered more palatable, by being softened by the accompaniment of some milder feeling. And finally, we know that the exhibition or conception of the emotions of others, even when in a high degree painful, is extremely interesting and attractive, and draws us away, not only from the consideration of indifferent objects, but even from the pursuit of light or frivolous enjoyments.

These emotions, then, are not original emotions, nor produced directly by any qualities inherent in the objects which excite them. They are mere reflections, or images of those emotions already radically and familiarly existing in the mind. They are not the direct result of any peculiar virtue intrinsically belonging to the objects before us, but are accidentally awakened by something in those objects, which reminds us of our own past sensations and sympathies. These objects are but mirrors, which have the power of reflecting our previous emotions; and, as an ordinary mirror gives us a different image each time that a different individual is placed before it, just so various are those emotions which are reflected by external objects from the minds of different individuals.

Every tie by which two objects can be bound together in the imagination, so that the presentment of the one shall recall the memory of the other; or, in other words, almost every possible relation which can subsist between such objects, may serve to connect the things we call sublime and beautiful with feelings that are interesting or delightful. Mr Alison has not made any attempt to

class or enumerate their various relations, the finer shades of which are perhaps as numerous and indefinable as are the changes produced by the seven notes of music; but he has very properly grouped them all together, under the sweeping name of Associations.

Nothing, in the whole range of Nature, is more strikingly and universally sublime than thunder; yet it seems obvious, that the sublimity is produced, not by any quality that is made sensible to the ear, but altogether by the impression of power and danger that is necessarily made upon the mind, whenever that sound is heard. That it is not produced by any peculiarity in the sound itself, is certain, from the mistakes and impositions that are frequently made with regard to it. The noise of a cart rattling over the stones is often mistaken for thunder. We have ourselves seen a whole party filled with awe and dismay for a considerable time, by a waggish boy slipping up the sash of a window, and cunningly hanging out a broad thick sheet of drawing paper, and then gently agitating it backwards and forwards, so as to produce a very accurate resemblance of thunder. As long as those who listen are deceived, such vulgar and insignificant noises are actually felt to be very sublime. They are so felt, because they are then associated with ideas of prodigious power and undefined danger; and the sublimity is destroyed the moment the association is dissolved, though the sounds themselves, and their effect on the organ, continue exactly the same. Sublimity, then, is here proved to exist, not in any physical quality of the object to which it is ascribed, but in its necessary connection with that vast and uncontrolled Power, which is the natural object of awe and veneration.

It is easy enough to understand how the sight of a picture or a statue should affect us nearly in the same way as the sight of the original; nor is it much more

difficult to conceive how the sight of a cottage should give us something of the same feeling as the sight of a peasant's family; and the aspect of a town raise many of the same ideas as the appearance of a multitude of persons. Let us, then, take an example a little more complicated, as, for instance, the case of a common English landscape, -green meadows, with fat cattlecanals, or navigable rivers-well fenced, well cultivated fields-neat, clean, scattered cottages-humble antique church, with churchyard elms, and crossing hedgerows, —all seen under bright skies, and in good weather. There is much beauty, as every one will acknowledge, in such a scene. But in what does the beauty consist? Not, certainly, in the mere mixture of colours and forms; for colours more pleasing, and lines more graceful, (according to any theory of grace that may be preferred,) might be spread upon a board or a painter's pallet, without engaging the eye to a second glance, or raising the least emotion in the mind: but in the picture of human happiness that is presented to our imaginations and affections in the visible and unequivocal signs of comfort, and cheerful and peaceful enjoyment, and of that secure and successful industry that ensures its continuance and of the piety with which it is exalted -and of the simplicity by which it is contrasted with the guilt and the fever of a city life—in the images of health, and temperance, and plenty, which it exhibits to every eye-and the glimpses which it affords, to warmer imaginations, of those primitive or fabulous times when man was uncorrupted by luxury and ambition, and of those humble retreats in which we still delight to imagine that love and philosophy may find an unpolluted asylum. At all events, however, it is human feeling that excites our sympathy, and forms the object of our emotions. It is man, and man alone, that we see in the beauties of the earth which he inhabits; or,

if a more sensitive and extensive sympathy connect us with the lower families of animated nature, and make us rejoice with the lambs that bleat on the uplands, or the cattle that ruminate in the valley, or even with the living plants that drink the bright sun and the balmy air, it is still the idea of enjoyment of feelings that animate the existence of sentient beings, that calls forth all our emotions, and is the parent of all that beauty with which we invest the objects of inanimate creation around us.

Instead of this quiet and tame English landscape, let us now take a Welsh or a Highland scene, and see whether its beauties will admit of being explained on the same principle. Here we shall have lofty mountains, and rocky and lonely recesses-tufted woods hung over precipices-lakes intersected with castled promontories -ample solitudes of unploughed and untrodden valleys -nameless and gigantic ruins—and mountain echoes, repeating the scream of the eagle and the roar of the cataract. This, too, is beautiful; and to those who can interpret the language it speaks, far more beautiful than the prosperous scene with which we have contrasted it. Yet, lovely as it is, it is to the recollection of man, and of human feelings, that its beauty is also owing. The mere forms and colours that compose its visible appearance, are no more capable of exciting any emotion in the mind, than the form and colour of a Turkey carpet. It is sympathy with the present or the past, or the imaginary inhabitants of such a region, that alone gives it either interest or beauty; and the delight of those who behold it, will always be found to be in exact proportion to the force of their imaginations, and the warmth of their social affections. The leading impressions here, are those of romantic seclusion and primeval simplicity-lovers sequestered in these blissful solitudes, "from towns and toils remote"-and rustic poets and