art: profuse ornament in painting, gardening, or archi tecture, as well as in dress or in language, shows a mean or corrupted taste:—

Poets, like painters, thus unskill'd to trace
The naked nature and the living grace,
With gold and jewels cover every part,
And hide with ornaments their want of art.
POPE'S ESSAY ON CRITICISM.

Simplicity in behavior has an enchanting effect, and never fails to gain our affection. And we take great delight in the laws of motion, which, with the greatest simplicity, are boundless in their operations.

In the fine arts, simplicity has degenerated into artificial refinement. In literary productions and music, the degeneracy is much greater.

REVIEW.

To what is the term beauty originally applied?

Give examples.

To what things is it extended by a figure of speech?

Give examples.

What is the common character of all the emotions of beauty? What is intrinsic beauty?-relative beauty?

How do they differ?

How do regularity, &c. aid the mind?

What is the use of proportion?

Why is a square less beautiful than a circle?

When is a square less beautiful than a parallelogram?

On what does the beauty of a parallelogram depend?

Why is an equilateral triangle less beautiful than a square?
Does order contribute to beauty?

In what is uniformity singular?

Illustrate this.

Is simplicity important?

Quote Pope's remark on the want of simplicity.

What is the effect of simplicity in behavior?

What is the present state of the fine arts and literature with re

spect to simplicity ?

CHAPTER IV.

Grandeur and Sublimity.

NATURE hath not more remarkably distinguished us from other animals by an erect posture, than by a capacious and aspiring mind, attaching us to things great and elevated. The ocean, the sky, seize the attention, and make a deep impression: robes of state are made large and full to draw respect: we admire an elephant for its magnitude, notwithstanding its unwieldiness.

The elevation of an object affects us no less than its magnitude: a high place is chosen for the statue of a deity or hero; a tree growing on the brink of a precipice looks charming when viewed from the plain below: a throne is erected for the chief magistrate, and a chair with a high seat for the president of a court. Among all nations, heaven is placed far above us, hell far below us.

In some objects, greatness and elevation concur to make a complicated impression: the Alps and the Peak of Teneriffe are proper examples; with the following difference, that in the former greatness seems to prevail, elevation in the latter.

Great and elevated objects, considered with relation to the emotions produced by them, are termed grand and sublime. Grandeur and sublimity have a double signification: they commonly signify the quality or circumstance in objects by which the emotions of grandeur and sublimity are produced; sometimes the emotions themselves.

St. Peter's at Rome, the great pyramid of Egypt, the Alps, an arm of the sea, a clear sky, are all grand and beautiful. A regiment in battle array is grand, a crowd of people not so. Greatness or magnitude distinguishes grandeur from beauty; agreeableness is the genus of which beauty and grandeur are species. The

emotion of grandeur is pleasant, and is serious rather

than gay.

A large object is not so agreeable by its regularity, as a small one; nor so disagreeable by its irregularities. A towering hill is delightful, a chain of mountains no less so; and the bulk of objects in a natural landscape are beautiful; some of them are even grand, as a flowing river, a spreading oak, an extended plain, which all raise emotions of grandeur. We range at large amidst the magnificence of Nature, and overlook slight beauties or deformities. In a small building, irregularity is disagreeable; but in a magnificent palace, or a large gothic church, irregularities are less regarded; in an epic poem we pardon many negligences that would not be permitted in a sonnet or an epigram. Notwithstanding such exceptions, it may be justly laid down for a rule, that in works of art, order and regularity ought to be governing principles: and hence the observation of Longinus: "In works of art, we have regard to exact proportion; in those of nature, to grandeur and magnificence."

The same reflections are in a great measure applicaple to sublimity; particularly, that, like grandeur, it is a species of agreeableness; that a beautiful object placed high, appearing more agreeable than formerly, produces in the spectator a new emotion, termed the emotion of sublimity; and that the perfection of order, regularity, and proportion, is less required in objects placed high, or at a distance, than at hand. The pleasant emotion raised by large objects has not escaped the poets:

-He doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus; and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs.

JULIUS CAESAR.-ACT I. S. 2.

Majesty

Dies not alone, but, like a gulf, doth draw
What's near it with it. It is a massy wheel
Fix'd on the summit of the highest mount,
To whose huge spokes, ten thousand lesser things

Are mortis'd and adjoin'd; which, when it falls,
Each small annexment, petty consequence,
Attends the boist'rous ruin.

HAMLET. ACT III. Sc. 3.

The poets have also made good use of the emotion produced by the elevated situation of an object.

O thou, the earthly author of my blood,
Whose youthful spirit, in me regenerate,
Doth with a twofold vigor lift me up,
To reach at victory above my head.

RICHARD II.-ACT I. Sc. 3

Northumberland, thou ladder wherewithal
The mounting Bolingbroke ascends my throne.

RICHARD II.-ACT V. Sc. 1.

Antony. Why was I rais'd the meteor of the world,
Hung in the skies, and blazing as I travell'd,

Till all my fires were spent; and then cast downward,
To be trod out by Cæsar?

DRYDEN, ALL FOR LOVE.-ACT I. The description of Paradise, in the fourth book of Paradise Lost, is a fine illustration of the impression made by elevated objects:

So on he fares, and to the border comes
Of Eden, where delicious Paradise,

Now nearer, crowns with her inclosure green,
As with a rural mound, the champain head
Of a steep wilderness; whose hairy sides
With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild,
Access denied; and over-head up grew
Insuperable height of loftiest shade,
Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm,
A sylvan scene; and as the ranks ascend,
Shade above shade, a woody theatre

Of stateliest view. Yet higher than their tops
The verd'rous wall of Paradise up-sprung;
Which to our general sire gave prospect large
Into his nether empire neighb'ring round.
And higher than that wall a circling row
Of goodliest trees, loaden with fairest fruit,
Blossoms and fruits at once of golden hue,
Appear'd with gay enamell'd colors mix'd.

B. IV. 1. 131.

A mental progress from the capital of a kingdom to that of Europe-to the whole Earth-to the solar system-to the universe, is extremely pleasant: the heart swells, the mind is dilated at every step. Re

turning in an opposite direction, the descent is pleasant from a different cause. Looking down upon objects makes a part of the pleasure of elevation. It becomes painful when the object is so far below as to create dizziness; and even when that is the case, we feel a sort of pleasure mixed with the pain: witness Shakspeare's description of Dover cliffs:

How fearful

And dizzy 'tis to cast one's eyes so low!

The crows and choughs, that wing the midway-air,
Show scarce so gross as beetles. Half-way down
Hangs one that gathers samphire; dreadful trade!
Methinks he seems no bigger than his head.
The fishermen that walk upon the beach
Appear like mice; and yon tall anchoring bark
Diminish'd to her cock; her cock, a buoy
Almost too small for sight: The murm'ring surge,
That on th' unnumber'd idle pebbles chafes,
Cannot be heard so high. I'll look no more,
Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight
Topple down headlong.

KING LEAR.-ACT IV. Sc. 6.

Grandeur and sublimity, have hitherto been considered as applicable to objects of sight; we now proceed to consider them in relation to the fine arts, and in their figurative signification. The term beauty is also extended to intellectual and moral objects, as well as to objects of sight. Generosity is an elevated emotion; firmness of soul, when superior to misfortune, is called magnanimity. Every emotion that contracts the mind, and fixeth it upon things trivial or of no importance, is termed low, by its resemblance to an emotion produced by a little or low object of sight: thus an appetite for trifling amusements is called a low taste. The same terms are applied to characters and actions: we talk familiarly of an elevated genius, of a great man, and equally so cf littleness of mind: some actions are great and elevated, and others are little and grovelling. Sentiments, and even expressions, are characterized in the same manner: an expression or sentiment that raises the mind is denominated great or elevated; and hence the SUBLIME in poetry. In such