But, in order to determine more exactly and more precisely, the bearing of a true æsthetic culture on morals and religion, let us examine more closely the relations and connexions between these two departments of human activity; and, particularly, by determining the sphere of æsthetics and the influences which it may send out on morals.

The sphere of aesthetics is, then, objectively ascertained and determined by beauty; as is that of intelligence by truth. Wherever beauty is to be found, there extends the domain of taste. And there is as truly objective beauty as there is objective truth. As truth is not determined as to its being by the percipient mind, so neither is beauty. We may easily distinguish between the eternal object and the inward affection;-the ab extra cause or occasion and the internal effect. If there be no object of beauty without us, then, obviously, there can be no exercise of the love of the beautiful upon it; and our nomenclature is all wrong. To speak of a love of the beautiful is absurd. If there be no objective beauty, that is, if our emotions of beauty be entirely independent and irrespective of what is without the mind, then we must take up with a pure idealism, and deny all outward or objective reality; not only all material existence, but, also, all divine and spiritual. For precisely the same arguments and reasonings will avail in the case of æsthetics, as in pure philosophy and in morals. All but idealists must admit that the awakening of the taste, the exercise of the love of the beautiful, is dependent on occasions, not determined by anything in the mind itself. The appearance of the rainbow on the thunder-cloud wakens this love into pleasing exercise; and whatever may be true of the psychological explanation of the pleasure thus produced, there is something in the cloud without us which has occasioned it. And this something, whatever it be, is rightly denominated objective beauty.1 If we allow that which is most true, that subjective beauty is an emotion and not a mere sensation ;-that it is consequent on the sensation, and that the sensation must intervene between the external object and emotion, still, the remote cause of the emotion may yet be in the external object; just as the perception of a geometrical truth may depend on the sensible impression made by a geometrical figure, while there is still a reality existing without the mind, which is the object of the perception, and is necessary to its existence. Beauty cannot be the mere pleasure which is experienced in a train of thoughts originated by a sensation. It is the source of the plea

1 The theory of Alison in his justly celebrated work on Taste, by the richness of its illustrations and the beauty of its style, entitled to the first rank among the aesthetic treatises in our language, is, in our opinion, defective in this respect, that it makes all beauty subjective. It is in the opposite extreme from the theory of Burke, who resolves all beauty into external sensuous impressions, or sensations of softness, smoothness, and the like, of which a mere brute is as susceptible as man. The truth lies between.

sure; as the perception of truth is the source of intellectual pleasure. There may be beauty, as every one must testify, which, in consequence of accidental associations, may, to a particular mind, be attended with pain; just as there may be truth which may be painful to an individual mind. It may be true, still, that both truth and beauty are, in their own nature, grateful to a rational love.'

Further, beauty resides in the forms of things. It is herein distinguished from truth; and æsthetics from proper science. Science respects the essence of things; aesthetics, their forms. Not all forms, however, are beautiful. The sphere of beautiful forms is limited. On the one hand, all mere corporeal impressions, the sensations of taste, touch, and smell, being purely organic, lie out of this sphere. On the other, all intellectual abstractions are excluded from it. It is impossible that either a mere object of any one of the animal senses, or a mere abstract truth, of itself, should ever awaken the emotion of beauty. Within this sphere are to be found only the world of sights and sounds, constituting the outward asthetic sphere and the conceptions of body, imaginations, emotions, and moral states, constituting the ideal æsthetic. In other words, in sights and sounds in the sensible world, and in the concrete mental exercises mentioned, and their outward expressions, is contained all objective beauty.

r

In the sensible æsthetic sphere, are found the harmonies and melodies of music; and the various products of art and nature, which exhibit themselves to the sight, among which are embraced those of painting, sculpture, architecture, as well as all the diversified beauties of the natural world. In the ideal æsthetic are included, not only the intellectual creations of poetry and elegant

1 The sight of Desdemona was, to Othello, after he became the victim of Iago's deception, a source of the extremest anguish. Yet had she lost none of her beauty even to him. Both remarks are fully evidenced in the following extract from Act iv., scene 2.

Had it pleased heaven'

To try me with affliction; had he rained.

All kinds of sores, and shames, on my bare head;
Steeped me in poverty to the very lips;

Given to captivity me and my utmost hopes;

I should have found in some part of my soul

A drop of patience; but, alas! to make me

A fixed figure, for the time of scorn
To point his slow unmoving finger at,-
Oh! Oh!

Yet I could bear that too; well, very well;
But there where I have garnered up my heart;
Where either I must live, or bear no life;
The fountain from the which my current runs,
Or else dries up; to be discarded thence!

Or keep it as a cistern, for foul toads

To knot and gender in!-Turn thy complexion then!
Patience, thou young and rose-lipped cherubim,
Ay, there, look grim, as hell

literature, but also all the free exercises of the moral nature, in the lower department of manners, and the higher sphere of strict morals.

But to determine more precisely and definitely, the sphere of objective beauty, let us endeavor to ascertain what, in these various departments of beauty, is common to all, and enables us thus to comprehend them in a class. What is this beauty which we identify in all these various objects of the æsthetic world? If we find ourselves as unable to define beauty as to define truth or color; if we can only refer to experience, and designate it by the occasion on which it is revealed to the æsthetic sense, we may, yet, by an enumeration of its specific forms, rise to a more perfect conception of its nature. At all events, we shall be enabled to see more clearly and satisfactorily, the moral bearings of aesthetic study and culture.

If we survey the whole field of æsthetic objects as already determined, we shall find that the beauty which characterizes them, lies in one of three things. There are three distinct kinds or ele ments of beauty.

In the first place, we discover in a product of Art, as in an Apollo or in a Laocoon, something represented in the subject itself, which we unhesitatingly designate as beautiful; while in a Gorgon, in other respects as perfectly conceived and executed by the artist, we recognise no such beauty of subject, but only what is hideous and revolting. We may admire the representation, given with so much true artistic skill by Scott, of Meg Merrilies; but the subject is a hag, revolting to our æsthetic sense, which we contemplate only with pain; while in Rebecca in Ivanhoe, we rest with an undisturbed delight on the loveliness of character in the subject of the representation. When we observe that the landscape gardener has, in the decoration of his grounds, given expression to the sentiments appropriate to his design-we will suppose, by the skilful arrangement of his trees and his shrubbery, has represented to us the sentiments both of seclusion and retirement, and also of cheerfulness and innocence, as the reigning sentiments to be realized in domestic scenes; we admire with a true æsthetic pleasure, the subject itself represented-the sentiments of seclusion and cheerfulness, as well as the skill of the artist, and the various other qualities of beauty which the scene may reveal to our minds. We will denominate this species of beauty lying in the subject of the representation, or, more generally, inhering in the representation itself, absolute beauty.

In the next place, we observe a beauty in certain motions, and in certain states of repose the results of former motion. There is a beauty in the free motions of supple infancy; and a beauty, too, in the easy composure of its limbs in quiet sleep, and the gentle curved lineaments which innocence and health have left impressed

on its countenance. This element of beauty has already received its appropriate designation-grace, in the language even of common life.

In the third place, we find objects or scenes in which we recognise the presence of beauty, which we cannot resolve into either of the two elements named. There is a beauty in decorum,`in naturalness, in fitness, in proportion. These and other terms of the same class, denote but specific instances of propriety. They may all be resolved into this one thing; the expression of what is proper, or of what belongs to the subject, the end or the means. In oratory, it is the giving to the theme, the object, the occasion, the audience, the speaker himself, what belongs to them respectively. In painting, it appears in the appropriateness of the subject, the correspondence and harmony of the parts, the suitableness of the coloring; all these various qualities, which awaken in us the sense of beauty, may be comprehended under the generic term-propriety; which means nothing more nor less than conformity to truth, in the largest sense of the phrase, and as applied to the exercise of artistic power.

It is to be remarked, respecting this last element, that it is indispensable in all perfect art, in all true beauty. There may be absolute or inherent beauty without grace; and there may be grace without inherent beauty. There may be propriety without either, but not conversely. There can be no beauty or grace without propriety. The conception of a mermaid, regarded as a whole, however perfect and beautiful might be its parts, is hideous and revolting. Yet propriety approaches to the character of a negative element or condition of beauty; while the other two are exclusively positive in their nature.

All those properties in objects which awaken the emotion of the beautiful, it is believed, may be reduced to these three classes -inherent beauty, grace, and propriety. Indeed, a priori, we might be safe in affirming that all beauty must lie in the properties of the object, inherent and fixed, or accidental and changing, or in their relations. Positive beauty, including the two firstnamed elements, embraces that which lies in the properties, inherent or changing, of objects; propriety respects their relations.

It may elucidate the distinction given between absolute beauty and grace, and help to show its logical correctness, to add the remark, that, as all beauty respects the forms of things, and the forms of things are, to our apprehension, either those of space or of time, absolute beauty is distinguished from grace in this, that while it is predicable only of those properties of objects conceived of under the relations of space, or analogous relations, grace respects only what is conceived of under the conditions of time. Thus grace ever respects motion, which necessarily implies succession in time.

Let us now endeavor to ascertain, more fully, the nature of objective beauty, from a distinct consideration of these different elements. Let us take, first, absolute beauty, or that department which lies in the fixed and inherent properties of a concrete beautiful object, and begin with an object in the sensible æsthetic world. We will take the rainbow spread out on the bosom of a black storm-cloud. We will abstract the absolute element, and shut out from view, for the time, the grace we discover in its easy curving, its soft repose on the buoyant cloud, the delicate blending of its hues, as if a hand of grace had pencilled it there, and exclude, also, all the various species of propriety, whether merely physical or moral, which it exhibits. Fixing our eye solely on the absolute beauty, we see there brightness, purity, peace. The external splendor, its unsullied clearness, and its motionless quiet, make their impression on our outward sense, But there is certainly no beauty in that sensible impression merely. The eye of the stupid brute has that sensation more perfectly, perhaps, than man; but it feels no beauty; it has no emotions. As the bodily eye discerns, through the impressions made on its retina, these physical properties, so the mental eye, we should rather say the rational eye, sees through these animal sensations, something that belongs, not to the sphere of sense-something that belongs to its own moral world. The brightness, purity, and peace it sees, are, subjectively, emotions, not sensations; and, objectively, they are images of rational, moral properties, not of physical properties of color and extension. They are what the brute cannot discern. The mere natural man, even, discerns them not, for they are only spiritually discerned.. They are apprehended by a spiritual sense. But they are there-that moral brightness, purity, peace; as truly as the ideas of them are in those verbal designations. Those physical properties are, like the names of them, the symbols of the spiritual. They are not drawn up into the mind by association; they are fixedly therethere not for to-day merely, but ever there, when the divine Iris reveals herself from the threatening heavens. Her message is ever the same, and invariable to every rational observer. The spiri tual eye looks up and reads the characters there. They are seen by intuition, not suggested. If the eye that perceives is within, what is perceived is without. It is not association that reveals grief in tears, joy in smiles. We see those emotions there. The brute sees them not. We see them not merely, because by association we have learned to connect the emotion with an outward phenomenon, which, of itself, possesses no significancy. The elements of beauty in the rainbow are seen as truly. The emotions are the effect of a cause operating from without; not the accidental accompaniment of a train of thoughts put in motion by a sensation. And these emotions respect moral properties; the moral brightness, purity, and peace, which are the objects of the emotions.