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ity is it, in framing even prints, to suffer a margin of white paper to appear beyond the ground; destroying half the relievo the lights are intended to produce! Frames ought to contrast with paintings; or to appear as distinct as possible: for which reason, frames of wood inlaid, or otherwise variegated with colours, are less suitable than gilt ones, which, exhibiting an appearance of metal, afford the best contrast with colour. The peculiar expression in some portraits is owing to the greater or less manifestation of the soul in some of the features. There is, perhaps, a sublime, and a beautiful, in the very make of a face, exclusive of any particular expression of the soul; or, at least, not expressive of any other than a tame dispassionate one. We see often what the world calls regular features, and a good complexion almost totally unanimated by any discovery of the temper or understanding. Whenever the regularity of feature, beauty of complexion, the strong expression of sagacity and generosity, concur in one face, the features are irresistible. But even

here it is to be observed, that a sort of sympathy has a prodigious bias. Thus a pensive beauty, with regular features and complexion, will have the preference with a spectator of the pensive cast: and so of the rest. The soul appears to me to discover herself most in the mouth and eyes; with this difference, that the mouth seems the more expressive of the temper, and the eye of the understanding. Is a portrait, supposing it to be as like as can be to the person for whom it is drawn, a more or less beautiful object than the original face? I should think, a perfect face must be much more pleasing than any representation of it; and a set of ugly features much

more ugly than the most exact resemblance that can be drawn of them. Painting can do much by means of shades; but not equal the force of real relievo: on which account, it may be the advantage of bad features to have their effect diminished; but, surely, never can be the interest of good ones. Soft

ness of manner seems to be in painting, what smoothness of syllables is in language, affecting the sense of sight or hearing, previous to any correspondent passion. The "theory of agreeable sensations" founds them on the greatest activity or exercise an object occasions to the senses, without proceeding to fatigue. Violent contrasts are on the footing of roughness or inequality.-Harmony or similitude, on the other hand, are somewhat congenial to smoothness. In other words, these two recommend themselves; the one to our love of action, the other to our love of rest. A medium, therefore may be most agreeable to the generality. An harmony in colours seems as requisite, as a variety of lines seems necessary to the pleasure we expect from outward forms. The lines, indeed, should be well varied; but yet the opposite sides of any thing should shew a balance, or an appearance of equal quantity, if we would strive to please a well-constituted taste. It is evident enough to me, that persons often occur, who may be said to have an ear to music, and an eye for proportions in visible objects, who nevertheless can hardly be said to have a relish or taste for either. I mean, that a person may distinguish notes and tones to a nicety, and yet not give a discerning choice to what is preferable in music. The same in objects of sight. On the other hand, they cannot have a proper feeling of beauty or harmony, without a

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power of discriminating those notes and proportions on which harmony and beauty so fully depend. What is said, in a treatise lately published, for beauty being more common than deformity (and seemingly with excellent reason), may be also said for virtue being more common than vice. Quere, Whether beauty do not as much require an opposition of lines, as it does an harmony of colours? The passion for antiquity, as such, seems, in some measure, opposite to the taste for beauty or perfection. It is rather the foible of a lazy and pusillanimous disposition, looking back and resting with pleasure on the steps by which we have arrived thus far, than the bold and enterprising spirit of a genius, whose ambition fires him only to reach the goal. Such as is described (on another occasion) in the zealous and active charioteer of Horace:

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hunc atque hunc superare laboret. Instat equis auriga suos vincentibus; illum præteritum temuens extremos inter euntem."

Again, the "Nil actum reputans, si quid restaret agendum" is the least applicable, of any character, to a mere antiquarian; who, instead of endeavouring to improve or to excel, contents himself, perhaps, with discovering the very name of a first inventor; or with tracing back an art, that is flourishing, to the very first source of it's original deformity.

I have heard it claimed by adepts in music, that the pleasure it imparts to a natural ear, which owes little or nothing to cultivation, is by no means to be compared to what they feel themselves from the most perfect composition.-The state of the question may be best explained by a recourse to objects that are analogous.-Is a country fellow less struck with beauty

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than a philosopher or an anatomist, who knows how that beauty is produced? Surely no. On the other hand, an attention to the cause may somewhat interfere with the attention to the effect.-They may, indeed, feel a pleasure of another sort. The faculty of reason may obtain some kind of balance, for what the more sensible faculty of the imagination loses.

I am much inclined to suppose our ideas of beauty depend greatly on habit-what I mean is, on the familiarity with objects which we happen to have seen since we came into the world.—Our taste for uniformity, from what we have observed in the individual parts of nature, a man, a tree, a beast, a bird, or insect, &c.—our taste for regularity from what is within our power to observe in the several perfections of the whole system. A landscape, for instance, is always irregular, and to use regularity in painting, or gardening, would make our work un; natural and disagreeable. Thus we allow beauty to the different, and almost opposite, proportions of all animals. There is, I think, a beauty in some forms, independent of any use to which they can be applied, I know not whether this may not be resolved into smoothness of surface; with variety to a certain degree, that is comprehensible without much difficulty. As to the dignity of colours, quere, whether those that affect the eye most forcibly, for instance, scarlet, may not claim the first place; allowing their beauty to cloy soonest; and other colours, the next, according to their impulse; allowing them to produce a more durable pleasure? It may be convenient to divide beauty into the absoJute and the relative. Absolute is that abovementioned. Relative is that by which an object pleases, through

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the relation it bears to some other. of beauty is, perhaps, compounded of all the ideas that have entered the imagination from our birth. This seems to occasion the different opinions that prevail concerning it. For instance, a foreign eye esteems those features and dresses handsome, which we think deformed. Is it not then likely that those who have seen most objects, throughout the universe," cæteris paribus," will be the most impartial judges: because they will judge truest of the general proportion that was intended by the Creator; and is best? The beauty of most objects is partly of the absolute and partly of the relative kind. A Corinthian pillar has some beauty dependent on it's variety and smoothness: which I would call absolute; it has also a relative beauty, dependent on it's taperness and foliage; which, authors say, was first copied from the leaves of plants, and the shape of a tree. Uniformity should, perhaps, be added as another source of absolute beauty (when it appears in one single object). I do not know any other reason, but that it renders the whole more easily comprehended. It seems that nature herself.considers it as beauty, as the external parts of the human frame are made uniform to please the sight; which is rarely the case of the internal, that are not Hutchinson determines absolute beauty to depend on this and on variety? and says it is in a compound ratio of both. Thus an octagon excels a square; and a square, a figure of unequal sides: but carry variety to an extreme, and it loses it's effect. For instance, multiply the number of angles till the mind loses the uniformity of parts, and the figure is less pleasing; or, as it approaches nearer to a round,

seen.

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