and, while the love of his subject has led him into great fulness of detail, and the sensibility of his heart lent a glow of warm colouring to every part of his composition, the reader need be under no fear of encountering either the refinements of ingenious dogmatism, or the ravings of sentimental folly. The book, perhaps, is a little too long, and the style a little too verbose; nor are the argumentative and theoretical parts kept sufficiently distinct from the illustrative and ornamental; but the whole is, in no ordinary degree, both beautiful and instructive."

Approving, as we do, of all that the learned reviewer has here said, we conceive that Mr Alison has completely exhausted and settled a question which had, some years before his publication, excited that voluminous and very amusing controversy, in which Burke, Knight, Price, Repton, Gilpin, and others, took prominent parts; and had not the able and accomplished critic, here quoted, produced that comprehensive and perspicuous digest of the work which his review exhibits, we should have believed that Alison had rendered all farther writing on this subject unnecessary. But in the article we have mentioned, we find the matter concentrated into its essential extract, if we may be permitted so to express ourselves. We shall therefore avail ourselves of this concise treatise, which our limits will compel us yet farther to abridge, and we shall employ it as the best vehicle for conveying to the reader, once for all, what we conceive to be the only just notions regarding the manner in which external objects affect the human mind with ideas of beauty or deformity, sublimity or the reverse, of which we believe it to be very necessary that he should be informed, so that he may carry them along with him in the perusal of the "Forest Scenery," to enable him justly to appreciate the very beautiful discrimination of Mr Gilpin, who, though always so happy in selecting

or characterizing the objects which fell under his observation, will yet be found to have assigned to them their respective qualities, without having been himself exactly aware of the true mode in which he was affected by them.

To use the language of the reviewer, "Those who have contended that beauty consists in curve linesin smoothness, smallness, or fragility-in regularity, or moderate variety-or in any other fixed or physical property,—have, for the most part, neglected altogether to explain how these properties should affect the mind with a sense of sublimity or beauty, or to determine the precise notions they should have excited; while those, on the other hand, who maintain that these emotions consist merely in the perception of utility, or of relation, or of what is ordinary and true, seem themselves to forget that every theory, even as to the nature of our emotions, must be ultimately verified by a careful examination of the objects that are found to produce them, and by a large induction as to the whole accompanying phenomena."

There are, in fact, two distinct objects of inquiry in an examination into the principles of Taste,—the first relating to the nature of the faculty itself, and the other to the nature of its objects; and it is quite essential that these should be discussed together, for "we can never ascertain what is beauty, without having clear notions of the state of mind which it produces, and in its power of producing which its essence consists; and it is utterly impossible to ascertain what is the nature of the effect produced by beauty on the mind, till we can decide what are the common properties that are found in all the objects which produce it."

Mr Alison's opinion is, that the emotions which we experience from the contemplation of sublimity or beauty, are not produced by any physical or intrinsic quality in the objects which we contemplate, but by the

recollection or conception of other objects which are associated in our imaginations with those before us, and consequently suggested by their appearance, and which are interesting or affecting, on the common and familiar principle of being the natural objects of love, or of pity, or of fear or veneration, or some other common or lively sensation of the mind. It is therefore the fundamental principle of this the first and most important proposition in his theory, that all objects are beautiful or sublime, which suggest to us some simple emotion of love, pity, terror, or any other social or selfish affection of our nature, and that the beauty or sublimity which we ascribe to them, consists entirely in the power which they have acquired, by association or otherwise, of reminding us of the proper objects of these familiar affections. Mr Alison adds, that the sensation of sublimity or beauty is not fully developed by the mere suggestion of some natural object of interest or affection; but it is distinctly felt only when the imagination is stimulated to conceive a connected train or series of such objects, in unison with that which was first suggested by the particular form, which is called beautiful only for having been the parent of such a train.

If taste were in reality a peculiar sense or faculty, of which beauty is the appropriate object, as light is of the sense of seeing, or sound of hearing, then the nature of beauty must be as familiarly and certainly known to all who possess that sense which relates to it, as the nature of light or sound is to those who can see or hear. It must always be recognized by the same properties and effects. No two persons who possess the sense can ever differ as to its presence or absence on any particular occasion; and, when once admitted to exist in certain forms, colours, or proportions, it must inevitably be discovered wherever the same forms and proportions are presented. But every one is aware that the very opposite

of this is the fact. Instead of being recognized like light, or sound, or heat, by all who possess the sense to which it is supposed to be adapted, in every object in which it is plainly perceived by any one such person, it is quite notorious that not only individuals, but whole nations, daily perceive the most exquisite beauty in objects, where other individuals or nations not only cannot perceive the least trace of beauty, but where they are actually affected with dislike and disgust, proceeding from the notions of deformity which are suggested by them; nay, the very same persons who have once rapturously admitted the beauty of certain forms, colours, or proportions, in one set of objects, daily confess that they can discover no beauty in the very same forms and proportions, when they happen to occur in a different set of objects. The forms, colours, and proportions that are respectively beautiful in a tree, a tiger, or a mountain, are not beautiful, to any eye, in a temple or a woman. But the most striking fact of all is, that the very same individual is often affected by the very same object at different times in precisely opposite ways, as he may be influenced by the peculiar state of his own mind at the moment, which inclines it to yield more readily to one train of association or another.

These remarks appear to be conclusive against the supposition of an intrinsic or elementary beauty operating directly on a peculiar sense or faculty of which it is the appropriate object. In other words, there is no such thing as an inherent quality of beauty existing in objects or forms. The absurdity of supposing a separate sense or faculty for the perception of beauty was too glaring to be long acquiesced in; and, accordingly, it seems to have been very early suspected that the peculiar emotion we received from the perception of beauty, might only be a modification of some other more simple and familiar emotion; and that all the beauty of an object might

consist in its merely suggesting this emotion. Accordingly, as many objects that are beautiful were observed to be also extremely commodious and useful, and as the ideas of use and convenience are naturally pleasing, it occurred to some ingenious persons, that beauty might perhaps consist altogether in utility; and that the mysterious pleasure which we derived from the sight of it, might be referred to those agreeable recollections, or natural sympathies, which we know to accompany the conception of convenience and comfort; and thus a satisfactory explanation was given of a great part of the beauty of the proportions and forms of buildings, the limbs of animals, and other objects of this description. When applied, however, to things of a different sort, this theory was found utterly to fail. Many things were eminently useful, in which even the authors of the theory could discover no beauty; and many things were indisputably beautiful, which could only be connected with utility by the most revolting and ludicrous straining of the imagination. Ploughs, and dunghills, and bank bills, were very useful; but no one could be persuaded to think them beautiful: and the people were in raptures with the beauty of rosebuds, and statues, and idle young women, that were allowed to be of no use whatever. It was evidently a great mistake, therefore, to suppose that our sense of beauty was nothing more than a perception of utility.

Other theories, partially true, but equally fantastical and fallacious when universally applied, succeeded and failed successively, the error of the theorists lying, not in the circumstance of their stating these as sources of beauty, but in that of their holding that there are no other sources, and announcing as universal theorems what were only solutions of particular problems.

It is a matter sufficiently well known, that beauty is as various as the variety of mental emotion. Some