different aspects from those in which they appear to us as objects of beauty, and of attending only to their unaffecting qualities, may perhaps better account both for this gradual decay of our sensibility, and for its temporary returns.

When a man of any taste, for instance, first settles in a romantic country, he is willing to flatter himself that he can never be satiated with its beauties, and that in their contemplation he shall continue to receive the same exquisite delight. The aspect in which he now sees them, is solely that in which they are calculated to produce emotion. The streams are known to him only by their gentleness or their majesty, the woods by their solemnity, the rocks by their awfulness or terror. In a very short time, however, he is forced to consider them in very different lights. They are useful to him for some purposes, either of occupation or amusement. They serve as distinctions of different properties, or of different divisions of the country. They become boundaries or landmarks, by which his knowledge of the neighbourhood is ascertained. It is with these qualities that he hears them usually spoken of by all who surround him. It is in this light that he must often speak and think of them himself. It is with these qualities accordingly, that he comes at last insensibly to consider them, in the common hours of his life. Even a circumstance so trifling as the assignation of particular names, contributes in a great degree to produce this effect; because the use of such names, in marking the particular situation or place of such objects, naturally leads him to consider the objects themselves in no other light than that of their piace or situation. It is with very different feelings that he must now regard the objects that were once so full of beauty, They now occur to his mind only as topographical dis,

tinctions, and are beheld with the indifference such qualities produce. Their majesty, their solemnity, their terror, &c. are gradually obscured, under the mass of unaffecting qualities with which he is obliged to consider them; and excepting at those times when either their appearances or their expressions are new, or when some other incident has awakened that tone or temper of thought with which their expressions agree, and when of conse quence he is disposed to consider them in the light of this expression alone, he must be content at last to pass his life without any perception of their beauty.

It is on the same account that the great and the opulent become gradully so indifferent to those articles of elegance or magnificence with which they are surrounded, and which are so effectual in exciting the admiration of other men. The man of inferior rank, whose situation prevents him from all familiarity with such objects, sees them in the light of their magnificence and elegance alone; he sees them, too, as signs of that happiness and refined pleasure, which men in his condition so usually and so falsely attribute to those of elevated rank; and he feels accordingly all that unmingled emotion of admiration which such expressions are fitted to produce. But the possessor must often see them in different lights. Whatever may be their elegance or their beauty, they still serve some end, or answer some purpose of his establishment. They are destined to some particular use, or are ornaments of some particular place: they are articles in the furniture of such a room, or ingredients in the composition of such a scene: they were designed by such an artist, executed after such a model, or cost such a sum of money. In such, or in some other equally uninteresting light, he must frequently be obliged both to speak and to think of them. In proportion as the

habit of considering them in such a light increases, his disposition, or his opportunity to consider them as objects of taste diminishes. Their elegance or their magnificence gradually disappears, until at last he comes to regard them (excepting at particular times) with no farther emotion, than what he receives from the common furniture of his house. The application of the same observation to many more important sources of our happiness, is too obvious to require any illustration.

There is no man, in like manner, acquainted with the history or the literature of antiquity, who has not felt his imagination inflamed by the most trifling circumstances connected with such periods. The names of the Ilyssus, the Tiber, the Forum, the Capitol, &c. have a kind of established grandeur in our apprehensions, because the only light in which we regard them, is that of their relation to those past scenes of greatness. No man, however, is weak enough to believe, that to the citizen of Athens, or of Rome, such names were productive of similar emotions. To him they undoubtedly conveyed no other ideas, than those of the particular divisions of the city in which he dwelt, and were heard, of consequence, with the same indifference that the citizen of London now hears of the Strand, or the Tower.

3. The influence of fashion, in producing so frequent revolutions in the sentiments of men, with regard to the beauty of those objects to which it extends, and in disposing us to neglect or to despise at one time, the objects which we considered as beautiful before, may perhaps be explained upon the same principle. Fashion may be considered in general as the custom of the great. It is the dress, the furniture, the language, the manners of the great world, which constitute what is called the fashion in each of these articles, and which the rest of mankind

are in such haste to adopt, after their example. Whatever the real beauty or propriety of these articles may be, it is not in this light that we consider them. They are the signs of that elegance, and taste, and splendour, which is so liberally attributed to elevated rank; they are associated with the consequence which such situations bestow; and they establish a kind of external distinction between this envied station, and those humble and mor tifying conditions of life, to which no man is willing to belong.

It is in the light therefore of this connexion only, that we are disposed to consider them; and they accordingly affect us with the same emotion of delight, which we receive from the consideration of taste or elegance, in more permanent instances. As soon, however, as this association is destroyed, as soon as the caprice or the inconstancy of the great have introduced other usages in their place, our opinion of their beauty is immediately destroyed. The quality which was formerly so pleasing or so interesting in them, the quality which alone we considered, is now appropriated to other objects, and our admiration readily transfers itself to those newer forms, which have risen into distinction from the same The forsaken fashion, whatever may be its real or intrinsic beauty, falls, for the present at least, into neglect or contempt; because, either our admiration of it was founded only upon that quality which it has lost, or because it has now descended to the inferior ranks, and is of consequence associated with ideas of meanness and vulgarity. A few years bring round again the same fashion. The same association attends it, and our admiration is renewed as before. It is on the same account, that they who are most liable to the seduction of fashion, are people on whose minds the slighter associations have a strong effect. A plain man is incapable of such asso

cause.

ciations: a man of sense is above them; but the young and the frivolous, whose principles of taste are either unformed, or whose minds are unable to maintain any settled opinions, are apt to lose sight of every other quality in such objects, but their relation to the practice of the great, and of course, to suffer their sentiments of beauty to vary with the caprice of this practice. It is the same cause which attaches the old to the fashions of their youth. They are associated with the memory of their better days, with a thousand recollections of happiness, and gaiety, and heartfelt pleasures, which they now no longer feel. The fashions of modern times have no such pleasing associations to them. They are connected to them, only with ideas of thoughtless gaiety, or childish caprice. It is the fashions of their youth alone, therefore, that they consider as beautiful.

III.

It may farther be observed, that the dependence of taste upon sensibility, or the necessity of some simple emotion being excited, before the beauty or sublimity of any object is perceived, is so far from being remote from general observation, that it is the foundation of some of the most common judgments we form with regard to the characters of men.

1. When we are but slightly acquainted with any person, and have had no opportunities of knowing the particular nature of his sentiments or turn of mind, we never venture to pronounce, or even to guess with regard to his taste; and if, in such a stage of our acquaintance, we find that his opinions of beauty are very different from our own, we are so far from being surprised at it, that we set ourselves very deliberately to account for it, either by recalling to mind those habits or occupations