dard of taste, as well as of the agreement which subsists among the best writers on the subject. In the next chapter, we proceed to a more fundamental and difficult inquiry.

CHAPTER VI. .

THE ELEMENTS OF BEAUTY.

On the subject of the preceding chapter, even the reasonings of Hume appear to me to be of too vague and indefinite a kind. It requires the more minute scrutiny into which I shall now enter, in order to place it upon a deeper and more scientific foundation. If I can here show that, in the material qualities of the objects of nature and art, there exist elements of beauty equally invariable in themselves and in the kind of effect they produce upon the mind, it is evident there can be no farther dispute about a standard of beauty.

Many attempts have been made to determine the material elements of beauty, by Hogarth, Home, and others. All have more or less failed, from not observing that these elements are modified, varied, and complicated, as we advance from the most simple to the most complex class of natural beings, or of the arts which relate to these respectively. Many partial views of perfect truth and great in

To the reader unaccustomed to inquiries of this kind, it may save trouble to peruse first the brief Summary of the contents of this important chapter, beginning in page 120.

terest have been taken, and by every one of these it will be my duty here to profit: but, from the failure just pointed out, no philosophical and systematic doctrine of beauty, ascending from its origin in elements through its higher combinations, has ever been attained by any of the numerous, deep, acute, and elegant thinkers who have devoted their time to this subject, as the foundation of taste and of the fine or intellectual arts.

Profiting, as I ought to do, by the partial views of these philosophers, I pretend here only to take one larger view-to analyze, to generalize, to systematize, the materials which they present to

me.

In the hope of accomplishing this, I shall now endeavor successively to trace the elements of beauty which belong respectively to inanimate, living, and thinking beings, and to the useful, ornamental, and intellectual arts which have a reference to these, the neglect of all which I have described as the fundamental cause of previous failure.

Again, I repeat, it is to this analysis and generalization alone, and to the systemization founded upon it, that I make any pretence. The materials have long been presented by all the great writers on the subject: they have only left them in confusion, and without conclusion. I shall now proceed to employ them.

7

SECTION I.

ELEMENTS OF BEAUTY IN INANIMATE BEINGS.

THOUGH Burke did not accurately trace the elements of beauty in any one class of the objects of nature or art, he yet states a preliminary truth on this subject so well, that I here quote it: "It would be absurd," he observes, "to say that all things affect us by association only; since some things must have been originally and naturally agreeable or disagreeable, from which the others derive their associated powers; and it would be, I fancy, to little purpose to look for the cause of our passions in association, until we fail of it in the natural properties of things."

Home, advancing farther, says: "If a tree be beautiful by means of its color, its figure, its size, its motion, it is in reality possessed of so many different beauties, which ought to be examined separately, in order to have a clear notion of the whole.

"When any body is viewed as a whole, the beauty of its figure arises from regularity* and simplicity; and viewing the parts with relation to each other, from uniformity*, proportion, and order."

* Regularity expresses the similarity of parts considered as constituting a whole; and uniformity, the similarity of parts considered separately.

I will here only observe that these are the qualities, as will speedily appear, which Burke should have set down as the fundamental and first char acteristics of beauty, instead of relative littleness, which belongs not to beauty generally, but only to the minor or subordinate beauty.

Even Home, having arrived thus far, says: "To inquire why an object, by means of the particulars mentioned, appears beautiful, would, I am afraid, be a vain attempt.”

But he truly adds: "One thing is clear, that regularity, uniformity, order, and simplicity, contribute each of them to readiness of apprehension, and enable us to form more distinct images of objects than can be done, with the utmost attention, where these particulars are not found." And he subjoins: "This final cause is, I acknowledge, too slight, to account satisfactorily for a taste that makes a figure so illustrious in the nature of man ; and that this branch of our constitution has a purpose still more important, we have great reason to believe."

Now had Home seen that the characteristics of general beauty always are, with regard to the object, accordant and agreeable relations, the importance of the qualities he has just enumerated would have been evident; for, without them, these characteristics of the object could not exist: simplicity, regularity, uniformity, order, &c., are the very elements of accordant and agreeable relations. This is in reality the still more important purpose in which Home believed, and to which the readiness