such often is the colouring of Titian, particularly in his sleeping Venus, or whatever other beauty that charming piece was meant to represent.

The reason why these colours please so much is not only their natural liveliness, nor the much greater charms they obtain from their being properly blended together, but is also owing in some degree to the idea they carry with them of good health, without which all beauty grows languid and less engaging, and with which it always recovers an additional life and lustre.

As to the colour of the face in particular, a great deal of its beauty is owing (besides the causes I have already mentioned) to variety, that being designed by nature for the greatest concourse of different colours, of any part of the

Subjecit rubor, et calefacta per ora cucurrit.
Indum sanguineo veluti violaverit ostro

Si quis ebur; vel mixta rubent ubi lilia multâ
Alba rosâ tales virgo dabat ore colores.

Or as Dryden has translated or rather paraphrased it:

At this a flood of tears Lavinia shed;

A crimson blush her beauteous face o'erspread,
Varying her cheeks by turns with white and red,
The driving colours, never at a stay

Run here and there; and flush, and fade away.
Delightful change thus Indian ivory shows,
Which, with the bordering paint of purple glows;
Or lilies damask'd by the neighbouring rose.

human body. Colours please by opposition, and it is in the face they are most diversified, and the most opposed.

The reader would laugh perhaps, if I were to assert that the same thing which makes a fine evening, makes a fine face, (I mean as to the colour), and yet this, I believe, is very true.

The beauty of an evening sky about the setting of the sun, is owing to the variety of colours that are scattered along the face of the heavens. It is the fine red clouds, intermixed with white, and sometimes darker ones, with the azure bottom appearing here and there between them, which makes all that beautiful composition, that delights the eye so much and gives such serer.e pleasure to the heart. In the same manner if we consider some beautiful faces, we may observe, that it is much the same variety of colours, which gives them that pleasing look; so apt to attract the eye, and but too often to engage the heart.

For all this sort of beauty is resolvable into a proper variation of flesh-colour and red, with the clear blueness of the veins pleasingly intermixed about the temples and the going off of the cheeks, and set off by the shades of full eyebrows; and of the hair, when it falls in a proper manner round the face.

It is for much the same reason, that the best landscape painters have been generally observed to chuse the autumnal part of the year for their pieces, rather than the spring. They prefer the variety of shades and colours, though in their decline, to all their freshness and verdure in their infancy; and think all the charms and liveliness even of the Spring more than compensated by the choice, opposition, and richrèss of colours that appear, on almost every tree in the Autumn.

Though our judgment is so apt to be guided by some particular attachments (and that more perhaps in this part of beauty than any other) yet I am a good deal persuaded, that a complete brown beauty is really preferable to a perfect fair one; the bright brown giving a lustre to all other colours, a vivacity to the eyes, and a richness to the whole look which are sought in vain in the whitest and most transparent skins. Raphel's most charming Madonna is a brunette beauty; and his earlier Madonnas (I mean those of his middle style) are generally of a lighter and less pleasing complexion. All the best artists in the noblest age of painting, about Leo the tenth's time, used this deeper and richer kind of colouring; and I fear we might add, that the glaring tints introduced by Guido, contributed much toward the declension of that art; as the

enfeebling of the colours by Carlo Marat (or if you please by his followers) has since almost completed the fall of it in Italy.

I have but one thing more to mention, before I quit this head; that I should chuse to comprehend some things under this article of colour, which are not perhaps commonly meant by that name. As that seeming softness or silkiness of some skins; that Magdalen look* in some fine faces, after weeping; that brightness as well as tint of the hair; that lustre of health, which shines forth upon the features; that luminousness that appears in some eyes, and that fluid fire, or glistening in others, some of which are of a nature so much superior to the common beauties of colour, that they make it doubtful, whether they should not have been ranked under a higher class, and reserved for the expression of the Passions; but I willingly give every thing its due, and therefore mention them here, because I

*The look here meant is most frequently expressed by the best painters in their Magdalens, in which, if there were no tears on the face, it would appear by the humid redness of the skin, that she had been weeping extremely. There is a strong instance in the famous Magdalen of Le Brun, in several by Titian, in Italy; in speaking of one Rosalba did not exaggerate when she said, Elle pleure jusqu'aux bouts de doigts.

think even the most doubtful of them, belong partly to this head, as well as partly to the other.

Form takes the turn of each part, as well as the symmetry of the whole body, even to the turn of an eyebrow or the falling of the hair. The attitude while fixed ought to be reckoned under this article; by which I not only mean the posture of the person, but the position of each part, as the turning of the neck, the extending of the hand, the placing of a foot, and so on to the most minute particulars.

The general cause of beauty in the form or shape of both sexes, is a proportion or an union and harmony in all parts of the body.

The distinguishing character of beauty in the female form is delicacy and softness; in the male either apparent strength or agility.

The finest exemplar of the former is the Venus de Medici; and for the two latter the Hercules Farnese, and the Apollo Belvedere.

There is one thing, indeed, in the last of these figures which exceeds the bounds of our present enquiry; what I heard an Italian artist call Il sovra humano, and what we may call the transcendant or celestial. It is something. distinct from all human beauty, and of a nature greatly superior to it; something that seems like an air of divinity, which is expressed,