BEAUTY.

The spiral tendency of vegetation infects education also. Our books

approach very slowly the things we most wish to know. What a parade we

make of our science, and how far off, and at arm's length, it is from

its objects! Our botany is all names, not powers: poets and romancers

talk of herbs of grace and healing; but what does the botanist know of

the virtues of his weeds? The geologist lays bare the strata, and can

tell them all on his fingers: but does he know what effect passes into

the man who builds his house in them? what effect on the race that

inhabits a granite shelf? what on the inhabitants of marl and of

alluvium?

We should go to the ornithologist with a new feeling, if he could teach

us what the social birds say, when they sit in the autumn council,

talking together in the trees. The want of sympathy makes his record a

dull dictionary. His result is a dead bird. The bird is not in its

ounces and inches, but in its relations to Nature; and the skin or

skeleton you show me, is no more a heron, than a heap of ashes or a

bottle of gases into which his body has been reduced, is Dante or

Washington. The naturalist is led _from_ the road by the whole distance

of his fancied advance. The boy had juster views when he gazed at the

shells on the beach, or the flowers in the meadow, unable to call them

by their names, than the man in the pride of his nomenclature.

Astrology interested us, for it tied man to the system. Instead of an

isolated beggar, the farthest star felt him, and he felt the star.

However rash and however falsified by pretenders and traders in it, the

hint was true and divine, the soul's avowal of its large relations, and,

that climate, century, remote natures, as well as near, are part of its

biography. Chemistry takes to pieces, but it does not construct.

Alchemy which sought to transmute one element into another, to prolong

life, to arm with power,--that was in the right direction. All our

science lacks a human side. The tenant is more than the house. Bugs and

stamens and spores, on which we lavish so many years, are not

finalities, and man, when his powers unfold in order, will take Nature

along with him, and emit light into all her recesses. The human heart

concerns us more than the poring into microscopes, and is larger than

can be measured by the pompous figures of the astronomer.

We are just so frivolous and skeptical. Men hold themselves cheap and

vile: and yet a man is a fagot of thunderbolts. All the elements pour

through his system: he is the flood of the flood, and fire of the fire;

he feels the antipodes and the pole, as drops of his blood: they are the

extension of his personality. His duties are measured by that

instrument he is; and a right and perfect man would be felt to the

centre of the Copernican system. 'Tis curious that we only believe as

deep as we live. We do not think heroes can exert any more awful power

than that surface-play which amuses us. A deep man believes in

miracles, waits for them, believes in magic, believes that the orator

will decompose his adversary; believes that the evil eye can wither,

that the heart's blessing can heal; that love can exalt talent; can

overcome all odds. From a great heart secret magnetisms flow

incessantly to draw great events. But we prize very humble utilities, a

prudent husband, a good son, a voter, a citizen, and deprecate any

romance of character; and perhaps reckon only his money value,--his

intellect, his affection, as a sort of bill of exchange, easily

convertible into fine chambers, pictures, music, and wine.

The motive of science was the extension of man, on all sides, into

Nature, till his hands should touch the stars, his eyes see through the

earth, his ears understand the language of beast and bird, and the sense

of the wind; and, through his sympathy, heaven and earth should talk

with him. But that is not our science. These geologies, chemistries,

astronomies, seem to make wise, but they leave us where they found us.

The invention is of use to the inventor, of questionable help to any

other. The formulas of science are like the papers in your pocket-book,

of no value to any but the owner. Science in England, in America, is

jealous of theory, hates the name of love and moral purpose. There's a

revenge for this inhumanity. What manner of man does science make? The

boy is not attracted. He says, I do not wish to be such a kind of man

as my professor is. The collector has dried all the plants in his

herbal, but he has lost weight and humor. He has got all snakes and

lizards in his phials, but science has done for him also, and has put

the man into a bottle. Our reliance on the physician is a kind of

despair of ourselves. The clergy have bronchitis, which does not seem a

certificate of spiritual health. Macready thought it came of the

_falsetto_ of their voicing. An Indian prince, Tisso, one day riding in

the forest, saw a herd of elk sporting. "See how happy," he said,

"these browsing elks are! Why should not priests, lodged and fed

comfortably in the temples, also amuse themselves?" Returning home, he

imparted this reflection to the king. The king, on the next day,

conferred the sovereignty on him, saying, "Prince, administer this

empire for seven days: at the termination of that period, I shall put

thee to death." At the end of the seventh day, the king inquired, "From

what cause hast thou become so emaciated?" He answered, "From the

horror of death." The monarch rejoined: "Live, my child, and be wise.

Thou hast ceased to take recreation, saying to thyself, in seven days I

shall be put to death. These priests in the temple incessantly meditate

on death; how can they enter into healthful diversions?" But the men of

science or the doctors or the clergy are not victims of their pursuits,

more than others. The miller, the lawyer, and the merchant, dedicate

themselves to their own details, and do not come out men of more force.

Have they divination, grand aims, hospitality of soul, and the equality

to any event, which we demand in man, or only the reactions of the mill,

of the wares, of the chicane?

No object really interests us but man, and in man only his

superiorities; and, though we are aware of a perfect law in Nature, it

has fascination for us only through its relation to him, or, as it is

rooted in the mind. At the birth of Winckelmann, more than a hundred

years ago, side by side with this arid, departmental, _post mortem_

science, rose an enthusiasm in the study of Beauty; and perhaps some

sparks from it may yet light a conflagration in the other. Knowledge of

men, knowledge of manners, the power of form, and our sensibility to

personal influence, never go out of fashion. These are facts of a

science which we study without book, whose teachers and subjects are

always near us.

So inveterate is our habit of criticism, that much of our knowledge in

this direction belongs to the chapter of pathology. The crowd in the

street oftener furnishes degradations than angels or redeemers: but they

all prove the transparency. Every spirit makes its house; and we can

give a shrewd guess from the house to the inhabitant. But not less does

Nature furnish us with every sign of grace and goodness. The delicious

faces of children, the beauty of school-girls, "the sweet seriousness of

sixteen," the lofty air of well-born, well-bred boys, the passionate

histories in the looks and manners of youth and early manhood, and the

varied power in all that well-known company that escort us through

life,--we know how these forms thrill, paralyze, provoke, inspire, and

enlarge us.

Beauty is the form under which the intellect prefers to study the world.

All privilege is that of beauty; for there are many beauties; as, of

general nature, of the human face and form, of manners, of brain, or

method, moral beauty, or beauty of the soul.

The ancients believed that a genius or demon took possession at birth of

each mortal, to guide him; that these genii were sometimes seen as a

flame of fire partly immersed in the bodies which they governed;--on an

evil man, resting on his head; in a good man, mixed with his substance.

They thought the same genius, at the death of its ward, entered a

new-born child, and they pretended to guess the pilot, by the sailing of

the ship. We recognize obscurely the same fact, though we give it our

own names. We say, that every man is entitled to be valued by his best

moment. We measure our friends so. We know, they have intervals of

folly, whereof we take no heed, but wait the reappearings of the genius,

which are sure and beautiful. On the other side, everybody knows people

who appear beridden, and who, with all degrees of ability, never impress

us with the air of free agency. They know it too, and peep with their

eyes to see if you detect their sad plight. We fancy, could we

pronounce the solving word, and disenchant them, the cloud would roll

up, the little rider would be discovered and unseated, and they would

regain their freedom. The remedy seems never to be far off, since the

first step into thought lifts this mountain of necessity. Thought is the

pent air-ball which can rive the planet, and the beauty which certain

objects have for him, is the friendly fire which expands the thought,

and acquaints the prisoner that liberty and power await him.

The question of Beauty takes us out of surfaces, to thinking of the

foundations of things. Goethe said, "The beautiful is a manifestation

of secret laws of Nature, which, but for this appearance, had been

forever concealed from us." And the working of this deep instinct makes

all the excitement--much of it superficial and absurd enough--about

works of art, which leads armies of vain travellers every year to Italy,

Greece, and Egypt. Every man values every acquisition he makes in the

science of beauty, above his possessions. The most useful man in the

most useful world, so long as only commodity was served, would remain

unsatisfied. But, as fast as he sees beauty, life acquires a very high

value.

I am warned by the ill fate of many philosophers not to attempt a

definition of Beauty. I will rather enumerate a few of its qualities.

We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous

parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all

things; which is the mean of many extremes. It is the most enduring

quality, and the most ascending quality. We say, love is blind, and the

figure of Cupid is drawn with a bandage round his eyes. Blind:--yes,

because he does not see what he does not like; but the sharpest-sighted

hunter in the universe is Love, for finding what he seeks, and only

that; and the mythologists tell us, that Vulcan was painted lame, and

Cupid blind, to call attention to the fact, that one was all limbs, and

the other, all eyes. In the true mythology, Love is an immortal child,

and Beauty leads him as a guide: nor can we express a deeper sense than

when we say, Beauty is the pilot of the young soul.

Beyond their sensuous delight, the forms and colors of Nature have a new

charm for us in our perception, that not one ornament was added for

ornament, but is a sign of some better health, or more excellent action.

Elegance of form in bird or beast, or in the human figure, marks some

excellence of structure: or beauty is only an invitation from what

belongs to us. 'Tis a law of botany, that in plants, the same virtues

follow the same forms. It is a rule of largest application, true in a

plant, true in a loaf of bread, that in the construction of any fabric

or organism, any real increase of fitness to its end, is an increase of

beauty.

The lesson taught by the study of Greek and of Gothic art, of antique

and of Pre-Raphaelite painting, was worth all the research,--namely,

that all beauty must be organic; that outside embellishment is

deformity. It is the soundness of the bones that ultimates itself in a

peach-bloom complexion: health of constitution that makes the sparkle

and the power of the eye. 'Tis the adjustment of the size and of the

joining of the sockets of the skeleton, that gives grace of outline and

the finer grace of movement. The cat and the deer cannot move or sit

inelegantly. The dancing-master can never teach a badly built man to

walk well. The tint of the flower proceeds from its root, and the

lustres of the sea-shell begin with its existence. Hence our taste in

building rejects paint, and all shifts, and shows the original grain of

the wood: refuses pilasters and columns that support nothing, and allows

the real supporters of the house honestly to show themselves. Every

necessary or organic action pleases the beholder. A man leading a horse

to water, a farmer sowing seed, the labors of haymakers in the field,

the carpenter building a ship, the smith at his forge, or, whatever

useful labor, is becoming to the wise eye. But if it is done to be seen,

it is mean. How beautiful are ships on the sea! but ships in the

theatre,--or ships kept for picturesque effect on Virginia Water, by

George IV., and men hired to stand in fitting costumes at a penny an

hour!--What a difference in effect between a battalion of troops

marching to action, and one of our independent companies on a holiday!

In the midst of a military show, and a festal procession gay with

banners, I saw a boy seize an old tin pan that lay rusting under a wall,

and poising it on the top of a stick, he set it turning, and made it

describe the most elegant imaginable curves, and drew away attention

from the decorated procession by this startling beauty.

Another text from the mythologists. The Greeks fabled that Venus was

born of the foam of the sea. Nothing interests us which is stark or

bounded, but only what streams with life, what is in act or endeavor to

reach somewhat beyond. The pleasure a palace or a temple gives the eye,

is, that an order and method has been communicated to stones, so that

they speak and geometrize, become tender or sublime with expression.

Beauty is the moment of transition, as if the form were just ready to

flow into other forms. Any fixedness, heaping, or concentration on one

feature,--a long nose, a sharp chin, a hump-back,--is the reverse of the

flowing, and therefore deformed. Beautiful as is the symmetry of any

form, if the form can move, we seek a more excellent symmetry. The

interruption of equilibrium stimulates the eye to desire the restoration

of symmetry, and to watch the steps through which it is attained. This

is the charm of running water, sea-waves, the flight of birds, and the

locomotion of animals. This is the theory of dancing, to recover

continually in changes the lost equilibrium, not by abrupt and angular,

but by gradual and curving movements. I have been told by persons of

experience in matters of taste, that the fashions follow a law of

gradation, and are never arbitrary. The new mode is always only a step

onward in the same direction as the last mode; and a cultivated eye is

prepared for and predicts the new fashion. This fact suggests the

reason of all mistakes and offence in our own modes. It is necessary in

music, when you strike a discord, to let down the ear by an intermediate

note or two to the accord again: and many a good experiment, born of

good sense, and destined to succeed, fails, only because it is

offensively sudden. I suppose, the Parisian milliner who dresses the

world from her imperious boudoir will know how to reconcile the Bloomer

costume to the eye of mankind, and make it triumphant over Punch

himself, by interposing the just gradations. I need not say, how wide

the same law ranges; and how much it can be hoped to effect. All that

is a little harshly claimed by progressive parties, may easily come to

be conceded without question, if this rule be observed. Thus the

circumstances may be easily imagined, in which woman may speak, vote,

argue causes, legislate, and drive a coach, and all the most naturally

in the world, if only it come by degrees. To this streaming or flowing

belongs the beauty that all circular movement has; as, the circulation

of waters, the circulation of the blood, the periodical motion of

planets, the annual wave of vegetation, the action and reaction of

Nature: and, if we follow it out, this demand in our thought for an

ever-onward action, is the argument for the immortality.

One more text from the mythologists is to the same purpose,--_Beauty

rides on a lion_. Beauty rests on necessities. The line of beauty is

the result of perfect economy. The cell of the bee is built at that

angle which gives the most strength with the least wax; the bone or the

quill of the bird gives the most alar strength, with the least weight.

"It is the purgation of superfluities," said Michel Angelo. There is

not a particle to spare in natural structures. There is a compelling

reason in the uses of the plant, for every novelty of color or form: and

our art saves material, by more skilful arrangement, and reaches beauty

by taking every superfluous ounce that can be spared from a wall, and

keeping all its strength in the poetry of columns. In rhetoric, this

art of omission is a chief secret of power, and, in general, it is proof

of high culture, to say the greatest matters in the simplest way.

Veracity first of all, and forever. _Rien de beau que le vrai_. In all

design, art lies in making your object prominent, but there is a prior

art in choosing objects that are prominent. The fine arts have nothing

casual, but spring from the instincts of the nations that created them.

Beauty is the quality which makes to endure. In a house that I know, I

have noticed a block of spermaceti lying about closets and

mantel-pieces, for twenty years together, simply because the tallow-man

gave it the form of a rabbit; and, I suppose, it may continue to be

lugged about unchanged for a century. Let an artist scrawl a few lines

or figures on the back of a letter, and that scrap of paper is rescued

from danger, is put in portfolio, is framed and glazed, and, in

proportion to the beauty of the lines drawn, will be kept for centuries.

Burns writes a copy of verses, and sends them to a newspaper, and the

human race take charge of them that they shall not perish.

As the flute is heard farther than the cart, see how surely a beautiful

form strikes the fancy of men, and is copied and reproduced without end.

How many copies are there of the Belvedere Apollo, the Venus, the

Psyche, the Warwick Vase, the Parthenon, and the Temple of Vesta? These

are objects of tenderness to all. In our cities, an ugly building is

soon removed, and is never repeated, but any beautiful building is

copied and improved upon, so that all masons and carpenters work to

repeat and preserve the agreeable forms, whilst the ugly ones die out.

The felicities of design in art, or in works of Nature, are shadows or

forerunners of that beauty which reaches its perfection in the human

form. All men are its lovers. Wherever it goes, it creates joy and

hilarity, and everything is permitted to it. It reaches its height in

woman. "To Eve," say the Mahometans, "God gave two thirds of all

beauty." A beautiful woman is a practical poet, taming her savage mate,

planting tenderness, hope, and eloquence, in all whom she approaches.

Some favors of condition must go with it, since a certain serenity is

essential, but we love its reproofs and superiorities. Nature wishes

that woman should attract man, yet she often cunningly moulds into her

face a little sarcasm, which seems to say, 'Yes, I am willing to

attract, but to attract a little better kind of a man than any I yet

behold.' French _memoires_ of the fifteenth century celebrate the name

of Pauline de Viguiere, a virtuous and accomplished maiden, who so fired

the enthusiasm of her contemporaries, by her enchanting form, that the

citizens of her native city of Toulouse obtained the aid of the civil

authorities to compel her to appear publicly on the balcony at least

twice a week, and, as often as she showed herself, the crowd was

dangerous to life. Not less, in England, in the last century, was the

fame of the Gunnings, of whom, Elizabeth married the Duke of Hamilton;

and Maria, the Earl of Coventry. Walpole says, "the concourse was so

great, when the Duchess of Hamilton was presented at court, on Friday,

that even the noble crowd in the drawing-room clambered on chairs and

tables to look at her. There are mobs at their doors to see them get

into their chairs, and people go early to get places at the theatres,

when it is known they will be there." "Such crowds," he adds,

elsewhere, "flock to see the Duchess of Hamilton, that seven hundred

people sat up all night, in and about an inn, in Yorkshire, to see her

get into her post-chaise next morning."

But why need we console ourselves with the fames of Helen of Argos, or

Corinna, or Pauline of Toulouse, or the Duchess of Hamilton? We all

know this magic very well, or can divine it. It does not hurt weak eyes

to look into beautiful eyes never so long. Women stand related to

beautiful Nature around us, and the enamored youth mixes their form with

moon and stars, with woods and waters, and the pomp of summer. They

heal us of awkwardness by their words and looks. We observe their

intellectual influence on the most serious student. They refine and

clear his mind; teach him to put a pleasing method into what is dry and

difficult. We talk to them, and wish to be listened to; we fear to

fatigue them, and acquire a facility of expression which passes from

conversation into habit of style.

That Beauty is the normal state, is shown by the perpetual effort of

Nature to attain it. Mirabeau had an ugly face on a handsome ground;

and we see faces every day which have a good type, but have been marred

in the casting: a proof that we are all entitled to beauty, should have

been beautiful, if our ancestors had kept the laws,--as every lily and

every rose is well. But our bodies do not fit us, but caricature and

satirize us. Thus, short legs, which constrain us to short, mincing

steps, are a kind of personal insult and contumely to the owner; and

long stilts, again, put him at perpetual disadvantage, and force him to

stoop to the general level of mankind. Martial ridicules a gentleman of

his day whose countenance resembled the face of a swimmer seen under

water. Saadi describes a schoolmaster "so ugly and crabbed, that a

sight of him would derange the ecstasies of the orthodox." Faces are

rarely true to any ideal type, but are a record in sculpture of a

thousand anecdotes of whim and folly. Portrait painters say that most

faces and forms are irregular and unsymmetrical; have one eye blue, and

one gray; the nose not straight; and one shoulder higher than another;

the hair unequally distributed, etc. The man is physically as well as

metaphysically a thing of shreds and patches, borrowed unequally from

good and bad ancestors, and a misfit from the start.

A beautiful person, among the Greeks, was thought to betray by this sign

some secret favor of the immortal gods: and we can pardon pride, when a

woman possesses such a figure, that wherever she stands, or moves, or

leaves a shadow on the wall, or sits for a portrait to the artist, she

confers a favor on the world. And yet--it is not beauty that inspires

the deepest passion. Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.

Beauty, without expression, tires. Abbe Menage said of the President Le

Bailleul, "that he was fit for nothing but to sit for his portrait." A

Greek epigram intimates that the force of love is not shown by the

courting of beauty, but when the like desire is inflamed for one who is

ill-favored. And petulant old gentlemen, who have chanced to suffer some

intolerable weariness from pretty people, or who have seen cut flowers

to some profusion, or who see, after a world of pains have been

successfully taken for the costume, how the least mistake in sentiment

takes all the beauty out of your clothes,--affirm, that the secret of

ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.

We love any forms, however ugly, from which great qualities shine. If

command, eloquence, art, or invention, exist in the most deformed

person, all the accidents that usually displease, please, and raise

esteem and wonder higher. The great orator was an emaciated,

insignificant person, but he was all brain. Cardinal De Retz says of De

Bouillon, "With the physiognomy of an ox, he had the perspicacity of an

eagle." It was said of Hooke, the friend of Newton, "he is the most,

and promises the least, of any man in England." "Since I am so ugly,"

said Du Guesclin, "it behooves that I be bold." Sir Philip Sidney, the

darling of mankind, Ben Jonson tells us, "was no pleasant man in

countenance, his face being spoiled with pimples, and of high blood, and

long." Those who have ruled human destinies, like planets, for

thousands of years, were not handsome men. If a man can raise a small

city to be a great kingdom, can make bread cheap, can irrigate deserts,

can join oceans by canals, can subdue steam, can organize victory, can

lead the opinions of mankind, can enlarge knowledge, 'tis no matter

whether his nose is parallel to his spine, as it ought to be, or whether

he has a nose at all: whether his legs are straight, or whether his legs

are amputated; his deformities will come to be reckoned ornamental, and

advantageous on the whole. This is the triumph of expression, degrading

beauty, charming us with a power so fine and friendly and intoxicating,

that it makes admired persons insipid, and the thought of passing our

lives with them insupportable. There are faces so fluid with

expression, so flushed and rippled by the play of thought, that we can

hardly find what the mere features really are. When the delicious

beauty of lineaments loses its power, it is because a more delicious

beauty has appeared; that an interior and durable form has been

disclosed. Still, Beauty rides on her lion, as before. Still, "it was

for beauty that the world was made." The lives of the Italian artists,

who established a despotism of genius amidst the dukes and kings and

mobs of their stormy epoch, prove how loyal men in all times are to a

finer brain, a finer method, than their own. If a man can cut such a

head on his stone gate-post as shall draw and keep a crowd about it all

day, by its beauty, good nature, and inscrutable meaning:--if a man can

build a plain cottage with such symmetry, as to make all the fine

palaces look cheap and vulgar; can take such advantage of Nature, that

all her powers serve him; making use of geometry, instead of expense;

tapping a mountain for his water-jet; causing the sun and moon to seem

only the decorations of his estate; this is still the legitimate

dominion of beauty.

The radiance of the human form, though sometimes astonishing, is only a

burst of beauty for a few years or a few months, at the perfection of

youth, and in most, rapidly declines. But we remain lovers of it, only

transferring our interest to interior excellence. And it is not only

admirable in singular and salient talents, but also in the world of

manners.

But the sovereign attribute remains to be noted. Things are pretty,

graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they speak to the

imagination, not yet beautiful. This is the reason why beauty is still

escaping out of all analysis. It is not yet possessed, it cannot be

handled. Proclus says, "it swims on the light of forms." It is

properly not in the form, but in the mind. It instantly deserts

possession, and flies to an object in the horizon. If I could put my

hand on the north star, would it be as beautiful? The sea is lovely,

but when we bathe in it, the beauty forsakes all the near water. For

the imagination and senses cannot be gratified at the same time.

Wordsworth rightly speaks of "a light that never was on sea or land,"

meaning, that it was supplied by the observer, and the Welsh bard warns

his countrywomen, that

--"half of their charms with Cadwallon shall die."

The new virtue which constitutes a thing beautiful, is a certain

cosmical quality, or, a power to suggest relation to the whole world,

and so lift the object out of a pitiful individuality. Every natural

feature,--sea, sky, rainbow, flowers, musical tone,--has in it somewhat

which is not private, but universal, speaks of that central benefit

which is the soul of Nature, and thereby is beautiful. And, in chosen

men and women, I find somewhat in form, speech, and manners, which is

not of their person and family, but of a humane, catholic, and spiritual

character, and we love them as the sky. They have a largeness of

suggestion, and their face and manners carry a certain grandeur, like

time and justice.

The feat of the imagination is in showing the convertibility of every

thing into every other thing. Facts which had never before left their

stark common sense, suddenly figure as Eleusinian mysteries. My boots

and chair and candlestick are fairies in disguise, meteors and

constellations. All the facts in Nature are nouns of the intellect, and

make the grammar of the eternal language. Every word has a double,

treble, or centuple use and meaning, What! has my stove and pepper-pot a

false bottom! I cry you mercy, good shoe-box! I did not know you were a

jewel-case. Chaff and dust begin to sparkle, and are clothed about with

immortality. And there is a joy in perceiving the representative or

symbolic character of a fact, which no bare fact or event can ever give.

There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrated to some

stroke of the imagination.

The poets are quite right in decking their mistresses with the spoils of

the landscape, flower-gardens, gems, rainbows, flushes of morning, and

stars of night, since all beauty points at identity, and whatsoever

thing does not express to me the sea and sky, day and night, is somewhat

forbidden and wrong. Into every beautiful object, there enters somewhat

immeasurable and divine, and just as much into form bounded by outlines,

like mountains on the horizon, as into tones of music, or depths of

space. Polarized light showed the secret architecture of bodies; and

when the _second-sight_ of the mind is opened, now one color or form or

gesture, and now another, has a pungency, as if a more interior ray had

been emitted, disclosing its deep holdings in the frame of things.

The laws of this translation we do not know, or why one feature or

gesture enchants, why one word or syllable intoxicates, but the fact is

familiar that the fine touch of the eye, or a grace of manners, or a

phrase of poetry, plants wings at our shoulders; as if the Divinity, in

his approaches, lifts away mountains of obstruction, and deigns to draw

a truer line, which the mind knows and owns. This is that haughty force

of beauty, "_vis superba formae_" which the poets praise,--under calm

and precise outline, the immeasurable and divine: Beauty hiding all

wisdom and power in its calm sky.

All high beauty has a moral element in it, and I find the antique

sculpture as ethical as Marcus Antoninus: and the beauty ever in

proportion to the depth of thought. Gross and obscure natures, however

decorated, seem impure shambles; but character gives splendor to youth,

and awe to wrinkled skin and gray hairs. An adorer of truth we cannot

choose but obey, and the woman who has shared with us the moral

sentiment,--her locks must appear to us sublime. Thus there is a

climbing scale of culture, from the first agreeable sensation which a

sparkling gem or a scarlet stain affords the eye, up through fair

outlines and details of the landscape, features of the human face and

form, signs and tokens of thought and character in manners, up to the

ineffable mysteries of the intellect. Wherever we begin, thither our

steps tend: an ascent from the joy of a horse in his trappings, up to

the perception of Newton, that the globe on which we ride is only a

larger apple falling from a larger tree; up to the perception of Plato,

that globe and universe are rude and early expressions of an

all-dissolving Unity,--the first stair on the scale to the temple of the

Mind.