And from, indeed, almost all the works of its author. The picturesque is the peculiar charm of Sir Walter Scott-the field in which he has no equal. It lay at the command of Cervantes and Shakspeare, but Scott lives in it, and every offspring of his imagination is more or less colored thereby. And this secret of his singular power over other minds, was, at the same time, the spell which attracted his own to feudal life and institutions, and rendered them subservient to his purposes.

The picturesque, as an acknowledged element in art, was born in the contrasts of medieval times, when the fragments and ruins of ancient things were gradually grouping themselves together with the new and still half savage, into something like unity. Upon the revival of intellectual freedom in Europe, it appeared to some degree in all classes of productions, but most eminently in that eldest child of modern genius, the Gothic architecture. The segregating principle of ancient taste very sparingly admitted the picturesque, though often presented on the face of nature. The rude peaks of Parnassus rising over the Cyrrhæan plain and adjoining sea, with the town and temple of Delphi upon its side, must have constituted a scene truly picturesque. The vale of Tempe, the pastures of Arcadia, and many a scene in Sicily, are celebrated for just that kind of beauty; yet, with the exception of Homer and Eschylus, Greek authors made very

little of it, and by all her artists, as far as their remaining works enable us to judge, it seems to have been carefully avoided. For that charming combination of the regular with the irregular, of the rude with the elegant, in works of modern genius, we seem to be indebted to the disorganization and romantic sentiments of the Middle Ages.

CHAPTER XI.

RECAPITULATION.

FROM all the different sources of beauty now passed under review, the following results appear to have been fairly deduced.

Of simple sensations those that are gratifying to the organs are beautiful. Truth, to be beautiful, needs only to be set in clear light, or, in other words, the view of it entirely freed from obstruction. In truth relative, the representation must perfectly coincide with fact; at least there must be no discrepancy apparent. In resemblance, the like, mingled with, but easily distinguished from, the unlike, must stimulate to classification, without fatiguing. In the case of cause and effect, the perfect adequacy of the one to the other must be, not obvious, but ascertainable with little labor, and so arranged that the learner may be guided by secure steps to the truth. It appears that unity and simplicity, corresponding to the mind's organization, have in the midst of all the various particulars going to full expression of the subject idea, to be kept definite, unwavering, and unembarrassed: that design,

the manifestation of a directing reason, must be such as the fullest consideration of the end to be attained, and the available means, will justify: that utility must appear efficient to the accomplishment of the conceived design that proportion, being the measure of parts for effecting unity of design, must appear exactly adapted to that purpose: that all agreeable emotions are necessarily sources of beauty in their own right: and that by sympathy and association they often render other objects beautiful, which of themselves have no claim to such an honor. These, if correct, are fundamental rules of art. The subordinate and specific must be developed by more minute study of the several heads.

Now, if we compare together the items of this summary, we shall be induced to take another step in generalizing. Sensations please by their adaptation to the physical organs-truth, because the mind entirely assents to it, as soon as all obstacles to the view of it are removed; truth relative, resemblance, cause and effect, when best suited to their purpose of communicating information in stimulating and guiding the mind to the acquisition of knowledge; unity and simplicity, design, utility and proportion, when most in accordance with the mind's organization and manner of working in the disposal of its knowledge, and, thereby, best adapted to aid its operations; and pleasurable emotions, for the obvious reason that they are perceived to be pleasurable.

Again, in looking over these results, we find one feature common to them all. They all have regard to correspondence immediately with some state of the mind, or immediately with the organs which it employs. And this, I think, is the only feature common to them all. Hence the conclusion, intimated at an earlier stage of our inquiry, but which is presented now in a more general form, that the beautiful (that is, the invariable intellectual antecedent of the emotion of beauty) is the mind's conception of conformity in objects to its own nature. This is the one gate through which all the avenues to beauty, infinitely varied as they are, must ultimately pass. The language employed in stating this conclusion is not capable of conveying all the meaning which it is intended to bear, to any except those who have followed us through the whole inquiry; nor is it possible to adopt any form of speech which will do so to a mind not prepared by reflection on the subject. Whatever the human spirit perceives to be in accordance to its own states and order is, to it, beautiful; or still, in other words, what it perceives to give satisfactory delight, whether directly or by association.

The aesthetic mental process is entirely analogous to the moral, and the act of the judgment in the one case is as liable to err and as amenable to criticism as in the other; and if an error in the former is not followed by such severe penalties as in the latter, it is only because the interests at stake are not so vital.