CHAPTER XX.
BEAUTY.
Soon as the eyes on beauty fondly form,
And find its pleasures, they awake the mind;
But heart and soul arise
And contemplate each lovely form,
Whilst every wish departs, save still to gaze.
Dante.
We have no hesitation in saying that one of the purest sources of intellectual pleasure is the presence of Beauty; for then the spirit finds an object for the exercise of all its powers, and the most agreeable emotions are created: yet it is not wonderful that the variety and inconsistency of our tastes, respecting the attributes and characteristics of any principles, should have led many philosophers to deny the existence of any certain combinations of forms and effects, to which the term beauty ought to be invariably applied. Voltaire says, "Nothing can be more beautiful than the idealities created by reading the discourse of Plato." Perhaps it would be more intelligible to say, a standard for the beautiful, in its most general acceptation, is not a simple idea, but is made up of a spiritual exquisiteness, a perception of the primary pleasures of imagination, of the secondary pleasures of sense, and of the conclusions of the reasoning faculty.
Though men of taste possess a ready perception and lively appreciation of the beautiful, it is not possible that
