The principles, which constitute grace, genius, or taste, are one;
which is denominated grace in the object, genius in the production of
the object, and taste in the perception of it.
The existence of grace _seems_ to depend more upon the character of
mental than of corporeal beauty. All its motions seem to indicate and,
to be regulated by the utmost delicacy of sentiment! I have placed it
between the highest sentiment of the human mind, _sublmity_, that
no rules can teach, and the highest sentiment that rules can teach,
_exact beauty_, the two extremes of the vrai reel and the vrai ideal.
Grace seems, as it were, to hang between the influence of both; the
irregular sublime giving character and relief to the negative and
determined qualities of beauty; and beauty, i.e. truth, confining
within due bounds the eccentric qualities of sublimity, forming, both
to sight and in idea, orderly variety, _the waving line_, neither
straight nor crooked. The waving line is the symbol, or memento, as
I may say, of grace, wherever it is seen in whatever form, animate or
inanimate; and may be justly styled the line of taste or grace!
The perception of grace seems not to be intirely new nor intirely
familiar to us; but is, as it were, what we have had a presentiment of
in the mind, without examining it, and which the graceful object, or
action, &c. calls forth to our view. Being so much our own idea, we
like to behold it, to dwell upon it; and yet, not being a familiar
idea, it creates a pleasing mild degree of admiration.
Grace seems half celestial; for all the virtues accompany, indeed
compose, the perception; for none, I imagine, can have a perception of
grace that has none of the charms of virtue.
The sentiment of grace, caused by the motion of beauty, music, poetry,
beneficence, compassion, &c. may be ranked as the highest intellectual
pleasure the mind is capable of perceiving, and brings with it a sort
of undetermined consciousness of the delicacy of our own perceptions
in making the discovery, a degree of that glorying that Longinus
observes always accompanies the perception of the sublime.
You can no more define grace than you can happiness. The mind cannot
so stedfastly behold it as to investigate its real properties. Grace
is indeed the point of happiness in the ideal region, both because it
arises spontaneously, without effort, &c. and because it seems partly
_within_ our own power, and partly _without_ it.
As common sense, in my fundamental circle, seems diffusive truth, so
grace, in my ideal circle, seems diffusive sublimity; every perception
of the former seems to be tinged, as it were, with the colour of the
latter.