and people of sagacity did not scruple to anticipate from it the most disastrous consequences to the cause of science and of letters. As if to verify these forebodings, the example of the Edinburgh was, in 1809, followed by the Quarterly Review, launched completely upon the principles of a party work. From the first appearance of the latter to the present day, every subject it has embraced, whether of science, of literature, or of philosophy, has been viewthrough the medium of party feelings; and what was once the cool, sequestered walks of the academy have been

lately assimilated to the agitated area of the forum. This spirit of the Quarterly Review has produced its natural consequences; the diffusion of more of party feeling throughout the pages of its rival; philosophy is obliged to yield, not to patriotism, but to her more ignoble adversary, party; every subject is distorted to answer the purposes of a sect; facts are often misstated; the first and simple principles of ratiocination are obscured, and the mind of the reader is led astray either by ingenious sophistry or by unintentional prejudices.

ON THE SOURCES OF THE PICTURESQUE AND BEAUTIFUL.
(Extracted from Blackwood's Magazine.)

IF any one be at the trouble to consult the many wire-drawn and desultory treatises which have been put forth "about and about" the Picturesque and Beautiful, he will find, I believe, that they all end, after many a weary catalogue of things which are, or are not, picturesque or beautiful, in laying down as a sort of general rule, that picturesque objects are rough, beautiful ones smooth. Dilapidated buildings, intermingling trees, perturbed waters, are, say they, picturesque. Glassy lakes, regular architecture, smooth hills, and shaven lawns, are beautiful. Good but why are we delighted with these things in such opposite and unaccountable ways? Why do we call a regularly built palace beautiful, and yet not tolerate it in a picture (or scarcely so) until it had tumbled down, and is overgrown with ivy, and choked up with weeds and brushwood? Discuss unto me, good Book-maker, what is the cause of all this apparent contradiction. I know well enough it is no joke to call the Picturesque" a picture askew;" but want, farther, to know how this comes about "the plain song of it;" in short, why landscape painters and their admirers are contented to draw any object, natural or artificial, in the precise ratio of its worthlessness in all other respects:-Why they luxuriate in tumble-down temples, deserted monasteries, ill-grown trees, twisted shrubs, coarse grass, withered leaves, old-wom

en, broken pots, hoopless casks, trndden-down corn, Shetland ponies, starved Jackasses, with masters" more ragged than Lazarus in the painted cloth!" A painter, like the owl in the fable, loves Sultan Mahmoud, because he can give him "fifty ruined villages." New this cannot be all whim and caprice. Whole bodies of men would not thus run mad "north-north-west" for nothing. "There must be reason for it, if philosophy could find it out."

It seems to be a universal law of our nature, that we attain to pleasurable feelings through two opposite media. There is the excitement of unusual exertion, mental or corporeal, or both mixed; and there is the pleasure of unexpected ease or quiescence. The first should appear to consist in the delight of overcoming a more than ordinary difficulty; the last in finding less difficulty than ordinary to overcome. This is applicable, more or less, in some shape or other, to every description, probably, of mental and corporeal action. Thus we take pleasure in ascending a mountain or climbing a rock from the difficulty overcome; and in skaiting, riding, or sailing, from the unusual ease with which we move. In reading, we are pleased with subtle argumentation, acute logic, or profound analysis, from the first principle, that of difficulty overcome; but with smooth poetry, or easy and familiar prose, from the unexpected quickness with

which the mind is led forward. The pleasure of riddles contrasted with that derived from those rhymes that are used as a "memoria technica," or artificial memory, is an instance in point; and of the same description is the pleasure received from hearing or playing difficult and complicated music, compared with that which arises from a flowing and simple air. It is needless to multiply examples. The general principle must, I think, be admitted to be true. Whether it may help us to a solution of the origin of the Picturesque and Beautiful-that is to say, of the modes of the different descriptions of pleasure which we draw from the contemplation of objects coming under those denominations, is the next inquiry.

In order to ascertain whether those principles elucidate the causes of the different sorts of pleasure, derivable from the view of certain objects called picturesque and beautiful, we must inquire whether these objects generally are adapted to call up the feelings in question according to the principles supposed. Let us take an example. The most picturesque object, perhaps, in nature, is a tree. Why is it so Because the distribution of its parts is so infinitely complicated and so wonderfully diversified, that the mind cannot, even by the longest-continued efforts, attain to a full and complete idea and remembrance of them. No painter could ever delineate a tree, branch by branch, leaf by leaf. If he did, no spectator could decide whether he had done so or not. Our most distinct idea of a tree is only general. We have little more than an outline. The greater and more superficial indentions of its foliage, its larger interstices of branch, its masses of shadow, and its most pervading hues, are enough for us. We are cc.npelled to lump and sloven over a million of beautiful particularities, exquisite minutenesses, which our apprehension is not microscopic enough to seize in the detail. In spite of our selves we make a daub of it even in imagination. Hence, in the contemplation of masses of foliage there is a perpetual excitement and struggle of the mind to obtain a complete idea-a

constant approach with an impossibility of reaching the desired goal. DIFFICULTY, then, is the source of the Picturesque. Irregular vanity is its life. Regularity, plan, and method, are its antipodes. They constitute the essence of the opposite quality-the Beautiful the term being, of course, used in a limited sense.

Let us try to elucidate this farther. I have said that the pleasure we derive from the contemplation of objects. which are styled Beautiful, as opposed to Picturesque, arises from the unexpected ease and readiness with which we comprehend the distribution of their parts. Take regular architecture as a specimen. In the the largest and most complex edifice of Grecian or modern regular architecture, general simplicity and order are the groundwork. Let the minor parts be ornamented as they will-let the details be ever so elaborate, ever so diversified, still the general design is at the first view fully present to the mind. Let any one look at the Parthenon, at St. Peter's, at St. Paul's, at Blenheim or Versailles, and he comprehends their plan at once. He perceives immediately that the parts of these immense edifices answer to each other; tower to tower, wing to wing, pillar to pillar, window to window. He is struck with He comprethe triumph of order.

hends at a single glance the distribu-
tion of millions of tons of marble or
freestone-the disposal of thousands of
He
yards of complicate ornament.
lays out at once correctly in his mind
acres of lawn and shrubbery-miles of
terrace or parterre. This pleasurable
sense of unexpected ease is the founda-
tion of the Beautiful as contrasted with
the Picturesque. They are produced
and reproduced by the alternate de-
struction of each other. The introduc-
tion of confusion is the origin of the
first, and the remedy of that confusion
is the origin of the second.

Let us take, for instance, the most beautiful temple that Grecian architec ture can boast. While perfect, it is no great subject of a picture in the abstract. But let time work his will with it. Let the columns fall, let the roof shrink, let moss and decay and vio

come from swine-keeping, and eating draff and husks "-is the very darling of the Picturesque; and he is so, because his wretchedness is not of a piece, like the other's finery. There is no method in't. The entire stocking on this leg does not ensure us against a torn one on the other, any more than the rent in this elbow necessarily presupposes a hole in that. He has no keeping about him, excepting a sort of medium tint of squalidity. There is no fellowship in his patches. They are various in form and in hue, as

charge full speed upon her, and break over her at intervals; and she becomes at once the very pink of the Picturesque in painting, it is to be observed, esque-the delight of painters-the

horror of underwriters.

In dress, the most beautiful and elaborate uniform is not picturesque. Why is it not so? Precisely because it is a uniform; because one part presupposes another. We know it by a section. Tassel dangles after tassel; lapelle balances lapelle; shoulder-knot copies shoulder-knot;

"Skirt nods at skirt; each button has a brother;

And half the collar but reflects the other."

Now, "handy-dandy," change-clothes --and "your tattered prodigal, just

In colouring, the same rules hold good. We may further observe of colours, that the most glaring are perhaps the least picturesque, from their being of unfrequent occurrence, in masses, in natural scenes. All the colours of a harlequin's jacket, however, would not be picturesque if regularly disposed. To be so they must be thrown together, and intermingle as Nature and the Seasons mingle them. Why are autumnal tints the greatest favourites? Because they are the most varied and capricious. The most complex figures, if we know them to be regular, are not picturesque. Nobody would apply the term to the flourishes on a bank-note, though their difficulty defy forgery. But they are only difficult to us. We see that, in fact, they are regular, and that we need only the key from the mechanic who cut them, to decipher them as easily as an intercepted dispatch.

the distance from which they are viewed. Many towns are so situated, as to present, when seen from certain stations, an outline the most picturesque possible. Draw nearer, and this gives way to the beautiful. We are enabled to fill up the outline, and find it in reality to cover objects of the opposite description-regular streets and regular houses.

less mass; and this is all. On the spot, we find tiers of houses, doors and windows, at regular distances; in short, nothing but smooth mason-work— straight lines, and right angles :-the distant sublimity of Edinburgh changed into the elegance of Bath, or the patent transcendental neatness of New Lanark.

If we apply the principles here conThis is the case with matended for to existing styles of architec- ny regular towns built on uneven ture, they would seem to elucidate the ground. From a distance we distinreason of our preferring in a picture the guish only the tops of buildings, rising Gothic to the Grecian. They explain, and falling capriciously-chimneys of indeed, why, in fact, we dwell the unequal heights--obscure shadows longest upon a Gothic edifice, and es- mingling and crossing-the whole prepecially upon its interior. The Goth-senting the appearance of a dark shapeic is an attempt to include the Picturesque in the Beautiful; and, to a certain extent, it is a successful one. If we examine the exterior and general plan of a cathedral, for instance, we shall find it to be beautifully regular. The details, however, are artfully complicated into an apparent irregularity. Excepting at one point of view, they are calculated to seem irregular. I have already stated, that the prinvaried tracery-the bundles of slender ciples attempted to be established, as pillars, the slender arches, branching the origin of our sense of the Ficturover the lofty roofs in every direction-esque and Beautiful, are yet applicable the ornamented windows-the broken lights-the crossing shadows-though in reality regular, yet form a composition that at first impresses every mind with the idea of irregularity. This is the charm of Henry the Seventh's Chapel. We gaze upon it with an unsated delight, which the most admirable simplicity could never bestow. The eye, comprehending the whole, can yet never enumerate nor store up the exquisitely varied minutiae of which that whole is composed. It is like the infi

The

to the explanation of other mental results. I might stop here-but there is one other subject with which they appear to me to be intermingled, of so enticing a nature, that, albeit it be something of a digression, it must be ventured. Digression you may haply call it, gentle reader; but I insist on its being a true and legitimate corollary, legitimately appended to the solution of the problem we have been puzzling about so long. Could I do less -it being the grand subject of some of

the prettiest wranglings that ever graced the annals of controversy, and which have been bandied by the prettiest mouths that ever betook themselves to the dry and dusty calling of polemics? It is that gentle breeze of doctrine which ruffles for a moment the silvery surface of female conversation, only to make it sparkle the more, -the metaphysic of the toilet-the stumbling-block of the far-famed "Parliament of Love," which defined it not -the subject which Anthony Count Hamilton has illustrated, but not explained—the "arcanum," which "Cupid's Casuist," in the spectator, failed to discover-the desideratum maximum-the physiognomical STANDARD OF BEAUTY!

subject, and an addition to our phraseology,

"The lady, though any thing but handsome, is agreeable."

circumstances.

This, to those who have seen her, pas-
ses for a palliation of the offence: To
those who have not, merely as the best
that can be said under the unfortunate
The culprit himself,
however, generally persists in his un-
happy error; and, as the devil will
have it, dies, at a good old age, a stub-
born heretic.
marries a beauty, and tires of her in
twelve months. What is the rationale
of this? The admiration of regularity
was lessened, not heightened by Time.
It was comprehended at once, and the
mind had no further employment. The
spells of the agreeable face, which was
der the features, "not according to rule,”
not handsome, Time touched not. Un-

His derider, haply,

were included minor traits-outward

and visible signs of inward and spiritual graces, which, varying as they meet with the occasion-now called forth

by one event, now by another-presented an inexhaustible field for admir

Beautiful." In the one, the mind is at the "Agreeable, as opposed to the once gratified by the most exact regularity; in the other, perpetually exci ted, by ever-varying traits, real or apparent, (are they ever not real?) of qualities in themselves admirable. The Agreeable in physiognomy, is to the Beautiful, what the Picturesque in painting is to the Beautiful. They please then, ye who, like me, have sometimes upon the same principles. Rejoice,

There is no subject, in the round of topics, that has been more dogmatized upon than this-howsoever many of these petitiones principii be" of such sweet breath composed," as might mollify even the shades of Acquinas or Duns Scotus into acquiescence; though the "angelic doctor" himself might yield to something more angelic; and the subtle logician confess the breathing observation. This is the charm of of beauty more subtle than the airiest refinements of the schools.-What is Beauty?-No question has been put more frequently; and what do we obtain by it?-An inventory of a set of features which are called "regular;" but why they are called regular, or how this regularity comes to be Beauty, we are not informed. We are referred by one to Greek statues; and, by another, to internal feelings.-"Then comes our fit again;" for we find that the practice of mankind is unanimous neither for the statues nor for the feelings. -What is beauty to a European, is deformity to a Negro. Our idea of Beauty, then, in the abstract, is a prejudice rather than a principle; and, as might be expected, events are perpetually clashing with it. Every day are our classical tastes shocked by some heretofore sensible young man falling in love with a face that would have given Phidias the spleen. We protest-we sneer we storm--and in reply we get from the friends of the forlorn (if he have any) at once, a new view of the

"Found Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt."

Make no more stumbling, unworthy,
Touchstone-like excuses—

“An ill-favour'd thing, sir; but mine own.”

Beat not your brains for Platonic apologies which no one believes; but assert at once, that what the world calls discord, is "harmony not understood." Cry "vina," and snap your fingers at controversy. Dare,

as others use,

To sport with Amarylis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair."
If I go on longer at this rate, I shall
get taken for Don Juan in disguise.