be tested by the expansiveness of our love; and that as far as the influence of association has voice in the question, though it is indeed possible that the inevitable painfulness of an object, for which we can render no sufficient reason, may be owing to its recalling of a sorrow, it is more probably dependent on its accusation of a crime.

CHAPTER V.

OF TYPICAL BEAUTY.

FIRST, OF INFINITY, OR THE TYPE OF DIVINE INCOMPREHENSIBILITY.

§ 1. Impossi- THE subject being now in some measure cleared of embarrassment, bility of adequately treating let us briefly distinguish those qualities or types on whose combination is the subject.

approached.

dependent the power of mere material loveliness. I pretend neither to enumerate nor perceive them all, for it may be generally observed that whatever good there may be, desirable by man, more especially good belonging to his moral nature, there will be a corresponding agreeableness in whatever external object reminds him of such good, whether it remind him by arbitrary association, or by typical resemblance; and that the numberless ways in which matter in some sort may remind us of moral perfections, are hardly within any reasonable limits to be explained, if even by any single mind they might all be traced. Yet certain palpable and powerful modes there are, by observing which we may come at such general conclusions on the subject as may be practically useful, and other than such I shall not attempt to obtain.

§ 2. With what And first, I would ask of the reader to enter upon the subject with simplicity of feeling to be me, as far as may be, as a little child, ridding himself of all conventional and authoritative thoughts, and especially of such associations as arise from his respect for Pagan art, or which are in any way traceable to classical readings. It is remarkable that Mr. Alison traces his first perceptions of beauty in external nature to this most corrupt source; thus betraying so total and singular a want of natural sensibility as may well excuse the deficiencies of his following arguments. For there was never yet the child of any promise (so far as the theoretic faculties are con

cerned) but awaked to the sense of beauty with the first gleam of reason; and I suppose there are few, among those who love Nature otherwise than by profession and at second-hand, who look not back to their youngest and least-learned days as those of the most intense, superstitious, insatiable, and beatific perception of her splendours. And the bitter decline of this glorious feeling, though many note it not, partly owing to the cares and weight of manhood, which leave them not the time nor the liberty to look for their lost treasure, and partly to the human and divine affections which are appointed to take its place, yet has formed the subject, not indeed of lamentation, but of holy thankfulness for the witness it bears to the immortal origin and end of our nature, to one whose authority is almost without appeal in all questions relating to the influence of external things upon the pure human soul.

Not for these I raise

The song of thanks and praise,
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense, and outward things,

Fallings from us: vanishings,

Blank misgivings of a creature

Moving about in worlds not realised.

And if it were possible for us to recollect all the unaccountable and happy instincts of the careless time, and to reason upon them with the maturer judgment, we might arrive at more right results than either the philosophy or the sophisticated practice of art has yet attained. But we lose the perceptions before we are capable of methodizing or comparing them.

instinct respecting space.

One, however, of these child instincts, I believe that few forget; § 3. The Child the emotion caused by all open ground, or lines of any spacious kind against the sky, behind which there might be conceived the Sea. It is an emotion more pure than that caused by the Sea itself; I recollect distinctly running down behind the banks of a high beach to get the land line cutting against the sky, and receiving a more strange delight from this than from the sight of the Ocean: I am not sure that this feeling is common to all children (or would be common if they were all in circumstances admitting it); but I am certain that the modification of it, which belongs to our after years is common to all; the love, namely, of a light distance appearing over a comparatively dark horizon. This I have

in after life.

tested too frequently to be mistaken, by offering to indifferent spectators forms of equal abstract beauty in half tint, relieved, the one against dark sky, the other against a bright distance. The preference is invariably given to the latter, and it is very certain that this preference arises not from any supposition of there being greater truth in this than the other, for the same preference is unhesitatingly accorded to the same effect in Na$4. Continued ture herself. Whatever beauty there may result from effects of light on foreground objects, from the dew of the grass, the flash of the cascade, the glitter of the birch trunk, or the fair daylight hues of darker things, (and joyfulness there is in all of them,) there is yet a light which the eye invariably seeks with a deeper feeling of the beautiful; the light of the declining or breaking day, and the flakes of scarlet cloud burning like watch fires in the green sky of the horizon; a deeper feeling, I say, not perhaps more acute, but having more of spiritual hope and longing, less of animal and present life; more manifest, invariably, in those of more serious and determined mind (I use the word serious, not as being opposed to cheerful, but to trivial and volatile), but, I think, marked and unfailing even in those of the least thoughtful dispositions. I am willing to let it rest on the determination of every reader, whether the pleasure which he has received from these effects of calm and luminous distance be not the most singular and memorable of which he has been conscious; whether all that is dazzling in colour, perfect in form, gladdening in expression, be not of evanescent and shallow appealing, when compared with the still small voice of the level twilight behind purple hills, or the scarlet arch of dawn over the dark, troublous-edged sea.

5. Whereto this instinct is traceable.

Let us try to discover what it is which effects of this kind possess or suggest peculiar to themselves, for this, whatever it be, must be one of the primal and most effectual motives of beauty to human sensation.

Do they show finer characters of form than can be developed by the broader daylight? Not so; for their power is almost independent of the forms they assume or display; it matters little whether the bright clouds be simple or manifold, whether the mountain line be subdued or majestic; the fairer forms of earthly things are by them subdued and disguised; the round and muscular growth of the forest trunks is sunk into skeleton lines of quiet shade; the purple clefts of the hill side are labyrinthed in the darkness; the orbed spring and whirling wave of the

torrent have given place to a white, ghastly, interrupted gleaming. Have they more perfection or fulness of colour? Not so; for their effect is oftentimes deeper when their hues are dim, than when they are blazoned with crimson and pale gold; and assuredly, in the blue of the rainy sky, in the many tints of morning flowers, in the sunlight on summer foliage and field, there are more sources of mere colour-pleasure than in the single streak of wan and dying light. It is not then by nobler form, it is not by positiveness of hue, it is not by intensity of light (for the sun itself at noonday is effectless upon the feelings), that this strange distant space possesses its attractive power. But there is one thing that it suggests, which no other object of sight suggests in equal degree; and that is Infinity. It is of all visible things the least material, the least finite, the farthest withdrawn from the earth prison house, the most typical of the nature of God, the most suggestive of the glory of his dwelling-place. For the sky of night, though we may know it boundless, is dark; it is a studded vault, a roof that seems to shut us in and down, but the bright distance has no limit; we feel its infinity, as we rejoice in its purity of light.

how necessary in art.

Now not only is this expression of infinity in distance most precious § 6. Infinity wherever we find it, however solitary it may be, and however unassisted by other forms and kinds of beauty; but it is of that value that no such other forms will altogether recompense us for its loss; and much as I dread the enunciation of anything that may seem like a conventional rule, I have no hesitation in asserting that no work of any art, in which this expression of infinity is possible, can be perfect or supremely elevated without it; and that, in proportion to its presence, it will exalt and render impressive even the most tame and trivial themes. And I think if there be any one grand division, by which it is at all possible to set the productions of painting, so far as their mere plan or system is concerned, on our right and left hands, it is this of light and dark background, of heaven light or of object light. For I know not any truly great painter of any time, who manifests not the most intense pleasure in the luminous space of his backgrounds, or who ever sacrifices this pleasure where the nature of his subject admits of its attainment; as, on the other hand, I know not that the habitual use of dark backgrounds can be shown as having ever been co-existent with pure or high feeling; and, except in the case of Rembrandt (and then under