§ 16. And animals. §17. Summary. appearance, such proportions have been neglected; more by the slenderness of the campanula than the security of the pine. What is obscure in plants is utterly concealed in animals, owing to the greater number of means employed and functions performed. To judge of expedient proportion in them, we must know all that each member has to do, its bones, its muscles, and the amount of nervous energy communicable to them; and yet, as we have more experience and instinctive sense of the strength of muscles than of wood, and more practical knowledge of the use of a head or a foot than of a flower or a stem, we are much more likely to presume upon our judgment respecting proportions here; and are not afraid to assert that the plesiosaurus and cameleopard have necks too long, that the turnspit has legs too short, and the elephant a body too ponderous. 1 But the painfulness arising from the idea of this being the case is occasioned partly by our sympathy with the animal, partly by our false apprehension of incompletion in the Divine work; nor in either case has it any connection with impressions of that typical beauty of which we are at present speaking; though some, perhaps, with that vital beauty which will hereafter come under discussion. I wish therefore the reader to hold, respecting proportion generally 1st. That Apparent proportion, or the melodious connection of quantities, is a cause of unity, and therefore one of the sources of all beautiful form. 2ndly. That Constructive proportion is agreeable to the mind when it is known or supposed, and that its seeming absence is painful in a like degree; but that this pleasure and pain have nothing in common with those dependent on Ideas of Beauty. Farther illustrations of the value of Unity I shall reserve for our detailed examination, as the bringing them forward here would interfere with the general idea of the subject-matter of the theoretic faculty which I wish succinctly to convey. 1 For the just and severe reproof of which, compare Sir Charles Bell (on the Hand,) p. 31, 32. CHAPTER VII. OF REPOSE, OR THE TYPE OF DIVINE PERMANENCE. in art. Its THERE is probably no necessity more imperatively felt by the artist, § 1. Universal feeling respectno test more unfailing of the greatness of artistical treatment, than ing the necesthat of the appearance of repose: yet there is no quality whose sem- sity of repose blance in matter is more difficult to define or illustrate. Nevertheless, sources. I believe that our instinctive love of it, as well as the cause to which I attribute that love (although here also, as in the former cases I contend not for the interpretation, but for the fact), will be readily allowed by the reader. As opposed to passion, changefulness, or laborious exertion, Repose is the especial and separating characteristic of the eternal mind and power; it is the "I am" of the Creator opposed to the "I become" of all creatures; it is the sign alike of the supreme knowledge which is incapable of surprise, the supreme power which is incapable of labour, the supreme volition which is incapable of change; it is the stillness of the beams of the eternal chambers laid upon the variable waters of ministering creatures and as we saw before that the infinity which was a Type of the Divine nature on the one hand, became yet more desirable on the other from its peculiar address to our prison hopes, and to the expectations of an unsatisfied and unaccomplished existence; so the types of this third attribute of the Deity might seem to have been rendered farther attractive to mortal instinct, through the infliction upon the fallen creature of a curse necessitating a labour once unnatural and still most painful; so that the desire of rest planted in the heart is no sensual nor unworthy one, but a longing for renovation and for escape from a state whose every phase is mere preparation for another equally transitory, to one in which permanence shall have become possible through perfection. Hence the great call of Christ to men, that call on which St. Augustine fixed as the essential expression of Christian hope, is accompanied by the promise of rest; and the death bequest of Christ to men is peace. § 2. Repose Repose, as it is expressed in material things, is either a simple how expressed in matter. appearance of permanence and quietness, as in the massy forms of a mountain or rock, accompanied by the lulling effect of all mighty sight and sound, which all feel and none define (it would be less sacred if more explicable), υδουσιν δ ̓ ὀρέων κορυφαί τε καὶ φάραγγες; or else it is repose proper, the rest of things in which there is vitality or capability of motion actual or imagined; and with respect to these the expression of repose is greater in proportion to the amount and sublimity of the action which is not taking place, as well as to the intensity of the negation of it. Thus we do not speak of repose in a pebble, because the motion of a pebble has nothing in it of energy nor vitality, neither its repose of stability. But having once seen a great rock come down a mountain side, we have a noble sensation of its rest, now bedded immoveably among the fern; because the power and fearfulness of its motion were great, and its stability and negation of motion are now great in proportion. Hence the imagination, which delights in nothing more than in the enhancing of the characters of repose, effects this usually by either attributing to things visibly energetic an ideal stability, or to things visibly stable an ideal activity or vitality. Thus Wordsworth speaks of the Cloud, which in itself has too much of changefulness for his purpose, as one § 3. The neces "That heareth not the loud winds when they call, And moveth altogether if it move at all." And again the children, which, that it may remove from them the child restlessness, the imagination conceives as rooted flowers, "Beneath an old grey oak, as violets, lie." On the other hand, the scattered rocks, which have not, as such, vitality enough for rest, are gifted with it by the living image: they "lie couched around us like a flock of sheep." Thus, as we saw that unity demanded for its expression what at first of an implied might have seemed its contrary (variety), so repose demands for its sity to repose expression the implied capability of its opposite, energy; and this even in its lower manifestations, in rocks and stones and trees. By comparing the modes in which the mind is disposed to regard the boughs of a fair and vigorous tree, motionless in the summer air, with the effect produced by one of these same boughs hewn square and used for threshold or lintel, the reader will at once perceive the connection of vitality with repose, and the part they both bear in beauty. repose. How But that which in lifeless things ennobles them by seeming to in- § 4. Mental dicate life, ennobles higher creatures by indicating the exaltation of noble. their earthly vitality into a Divine vitality; and raising the life of sense into the life of faith,-faith, whether we receive it in the sense of adherence to resolution, obedience to law, regardfulness of promise, in which from all time it has been the test, as the shield, of the true being and life of man or in the still higher sense of trustfulness in the presence, kindness, and word of God; in which form it has been exhibited under the Christian dispensation. For whether in one or other form; whether the faithfulness of men whose path is chosen and portion fixed, in the following and receiving of that path and portion, as in the Thermopyla camp; or the happier faithfulness of children in the good giving of their Father, and of subjects in the conduct of their King, as in the "Stand still and see the salvation of God" of the Red Sea shore; there is rest and peacefulness, the "standing still," in both, the quietness of action determined, of spirit unalarmed, of expectation unimpatient : beautiful, even when based only as of old, on the self-command and self-possession, the persistent dignity or the uncalculating love of the creature; but more beautiful yet when the rest is one of humility instead of pride, and the trust no more in the resolution we have taken, but in the hand we hold. 1 The universal instinct of repose, WORDSWORTH. Excursion, Book iii. But compare carefully (for this is put into the mouth of one diseased in thought and erring in seeking) the opening of the ninth book; and observe the difference between the mildew of inaction,-the slumber of Death; and the Patience of the Saints-the Rest of the Sabbath Eternal. (Rev. xiv. 13.) § 5. Its universal value as a test of art. § 6. Instances and Theseus. Hence I think that there is no desire more intense or more exalted than that which exists in all rightly disciplined minds for the evidences of repose in external signs: and what I cautiously said respecting infinity, I say fearlessly respecting repose; that no work of art can be great without it, and that all art is great in proportion to the appearance of it. It is the most unfailing test of beauty, whether of matter or of motion; nothing can be ignoble that possesses it, nothing right that has it not; and in strict proportion to its appearance in the work is the majesty of mind to be inferred in the artificer. Without regard to other qualities, we may look to this for our evidence; and by the search for this alone we may be led to the rejection of all that is base, and the accepting of all that is good and great, for the Paths of Wisdom are all peace. We shall see by this light, three colossal images standing up side by side, looming in their great rest of spirituality above the whole World horizon, Phidias, Michael Angelo, and Dante; and then, separated from their great religious thrones only by less fulness and earnestness of Faith, Homer and Shakespeare; and from these we may go down step by step among the mighty men of every age, securely and certainly observant of diminished lustre in every appearance of restlessness and effort, until the last trace of true inspiration vanishes in tottering affectation or tortured insanity. There is no art, no pursuit whatsoever, but its results may be classed by this test alone: everything of evil is betrayed and winnowed away by it; glitter, confusion, or glare of colour; inconsistency of thought; forced expression; evil choice of subject; redundance of materials, pretence, overcharged decoration, or excessive division of parts: and this in everything; in architecture, in music, in acting, in dancing, in whatsoever art, great or mean, there are yet degrees of greatness or meanness entirely dependent on this single quality of repose. Particular instances are at present both needless and cannot but in the Laocoon be inadequate; needless, because I suppose that every reader, however limited his experience of art, can supply many for himself; and inadequate, because no number of them could illustrate the full extent of the influence of the expression. I believe, however, that by comparing the convulsions of the Laocoon, with the calmness of the |