cult of attain

ment, yet essential to all good.

foam; and so of all colours, not that they may not sometimes be deep and full, but that there is a solemn moderation even in their very fulness, and a holy reference beyond and out of their own nature to great harmonies by which they are governed, and in obedience to which is their glory. Whereof the ignorance is shown in all evil colourists by the violence and positiveness of their hues, and by dulness and discordance consequent; for the very brilliancy and real power of all colour is dependent on the chastening of it, as of a voice on its gentleness, and as of action on its calmness, and as § 8. How diffi- all moral vigour on self-command. And therefore as that virtue which men last, and with most difficulty attain unto, and which many attain not at all, and yet that which is essential to the conduct and almost to the being of all other virtues, since neither imagination, nor invention, nor industry, nor sensibility, nor energy, nor any other good having, is of full avail without this of selfcommand, whereby works truly masculine and mighty are produced, and by the signs of which they are separated from that lower host of things brilliant, magnificent, and redundant, and farther yet from that of the loose, the lawless, the exaggerated, the insolent, and the profane. I would have the necessity of it foremost among all our inculcating, and the name of it largest among all our inscribing, in so far that, over the doors of every school of Art, I would have this one word, relieved out in deep letters of pure gold,-moderation.

CHAPTER XI.

GENERAL INFERENCES RESPECTING TYPICAL BEAUTY.

I HAVE now enumerated and, in some measure, explained those § 1. The subject incomcharacteristics of mere matter by which I conceive it becomes agree- pletely treated, able to the theoretic faculty, under whatever form, dead, organized, yet admitting of general concluor animated, it may present itself. It will be our task in the succeeding sions. volume to examine, and illustrate by examples, the mode in which these characteristics appear in every division of creation, in stones, mountains, waves, clouds, and all organic bodies; beginning with vegetables, and then taking instances in the range of animals from the mollusc to man; examining how one animal form is nobler than another, by the more manifest presence of these attributes, and chiefly endeavouring to show how much there is of admirable and lovely, even in what is commonly despised. At present I have only to mark the conclusions at which we have as yet arrived respecting the rank of the Theoretic faculty, and then to pursue the inquiry farther into the nature of vital beauty.

As I before said, I pretend not to have enumerated all the sources of material beauty, nor the analogies connected with them; it is probable that others may occur to many readers, or to myself as I proceed into more particular inquiry, but I am not careful to collect all evidence within reach on the subject. I desire only to assert and prove some certain principles, and by means of these to show something of the relations which the material works of God bear to the human mind, leaving the subject to be fully pursued, as it only can be, by the ardour and affection of those whom it may interest.

man's sake.

grees of it ad

§ 2. Typical The characters above enumerated are not to be considered as Beauty not created for stamped upon matter for our teaching or enjoyment only, but as the necessary perfection of God's working, and the inevitable stamp of his image on what he creates. For it would be inconsistent with his Infinite perfection to work imperfectly in any place, or in any matter; wherefore we do not find that flowers and fair trees, and kindly skies, are given only where man may see them and be fed by them; but the spirit of God works everywhere alike, where there is no eye to see, covering all lonely places with an equal glory; using the same pencil and outpouring the same splendour, in the caves of the waters where the sea snakes swim, and in the desert where the satyrs dance, among the fir trees of the stork, and the rocks of the conies, as among those higher creatures whom he has § 3. But de- made capable witnesses of his working. Nevertheless, I think that mitted for his the admission of different degrees of this glory and image of himself upon creation, has the look of something meant especially for us; for although, in pursuance of the appointed system of Government by universal laws, these same degrees exist where we cannot witness them, yet the existence of degrees at all seems at first unlikely in Divine work; and I cannot see reason for it unless that palpable one of increasing in us the understanding of the sacred characters by showing us the results of their comparative absence. For I know not that if all things had been equally beautiful, we could have received the idea of beauty at all; or if we had, certainly it had become a matter of indifference to us, and of little thought; whereas, through the beneficent ordaining of degrees in its manifestation, the hearts of men are stirred by its occasional occurrence in its noblest form, and all their energies are awakened in the pursuit of it, and What endeavour to arrest it or recreate it, for themselves. But whatever encouragement to be doubt there may be respecting the exact amount of modification of

sake.

§ 4.

hence received.

created things admitted with reference to us, there can be none respecting the dignity of that faculty by which we receive the mysterious evidence of their divine origin. The fact of our deriving constant pleasure from whatever is a type or semblance of divine attributes, and from nothing but that which is so, is the most glorious of all that can be demonstrated of human nature; it not only sets a great gulf of specific separation between us and the lower animals,

but it seems a promise of a communion ultimately deep, close, and conscious, with the Being whose darkened manifestations we here feebly and unthinkingly delight in. Probably to every higher order of intelligence more of his image becomes palpable in all around them, and the glorified spirits and the angels have perceptions as much more full and rapturous than ours, as ours than those of beasts and creeping things. And receiving it, as we must, for an universal axiom that "no natural desire can be entirely frustrate," and seeing that these desires are indeed so unfailing in us that they have escaped not the reasoners of any time, but were held divine of old, and in even heathen countries,' may we not see in these visionary pleasures, lightly as we too often regard them, cause for thankfulness, ground for hope, anchor for faith, more than in all the other manifold gifts and guidances, wherewith God crowns the years, and hedges the paths of Men? /

1Ἡ δὲ τελεία ευδαιμονία θεωρητική τίς ἐστιν ἐνέργεια. * * τοῖς μὲν γὰρ θεόις ἅπας ὁ βίος μακάριος, τοῖς δ ̓ ἀνθρώποις, ἐφ' ὅσον ὁμοίωμά τι τῆς τοιάυτης ἐνεργείας ὑπάρχει. τῶν δ ̓ ἄλλων ζῴων οὐδὲν ἐυδαιμονεῖ, ἐπειδὴ οὐδαμῇ κοινωνεῖ θεωρίας. Arist. Eth. Lib. 10th.

CHAPTER XII.

OF VITAL BEAUTY.

I. OF RELATIVE VITAL BEAUTY.

§ 1. Transition I PROCEED more particularly to examine the nature of that second from typical to vital Beauty. kind of Beauty of which I spoke in the third chapter, as consisting in "the appearance of felicitous fulfilment of function in living things." I have already noticed the example of very pure and high typical beauty which is to be found in the lines and gradations of unsullied snow :/ If, passing to the edge of a sheet of it, upon the lower Alps, early in May, we find, as we are nearly sure to find, two or three little round openings pierced in it, and through these emergent, a slender, pensive, fragile flower1 whose small dark, purplefringed bell hangs down and shudders over the icy cleft that it has cloven, as if partly wondering at its own recent grave, and partly dying of very fatigue after its hard won victory; we shall be, or we ought to be, moved by a totally different impression of loveliness from that which we receive among the dead ice and the idle clouds. There is now uttered to us a call for sympathy, now offered to us an image of moral purpose and achievement, which, however unconscious or senseless the creature may indeed be that so seems to call, cannot be heard without affection, nor contemplated without worship, by any of us whose heart is rightly tuned, or whose mind is clearly and surely sighted.

Throughout the whole of the organic creation every being in a perfect state exhibits certain appearances or evidences of happiness;

1 Soldanella Alpina.