it cannot be introduced at all. On the contrary, where the disposition to pleasure is preternaturally prevalent, as after wine and opium, and in certain morbid cases, the least hint will excite profuse joy, leaning chiefly to the pleasures of imagination, ambition, sympathy, or devotion, according to the circumstances.
It is easy to see how the doctrine of vibrations, which appears to be the only one that admits of permanent states of motion, and disposition to motion, in the brain, suits these last remarks in a peculiar manner.
The works of art, which afford us the pleasures of beauty, are chiefly buildings, public and private, religious, civil, and military, with their appendages and ornaments, and machines of the several kinds, from the great ones employed in war, commerce, and public affairs, such as ships, military engines, machines for manufacturing metals, &c. down to clocks, watches, and domestic furniture. The survey of these things, when perfect in their kinds, affords great pleasures to the curious; and these pleasures increase for a certain time, by being cultivated and gratified, till at last they come to their height, decline, and give way to others, as has been already observed of the pleasures arising from the beauties of nature.
The chief sources of the pleasures which the fore-mentioned works of art afford, appear to be the following:—the beautiful illuminations from gay colours: the resemblance which the play-things, that pleased us when we were children, bear to them; the great regularity and variety observable in them; the grandeur and magnificence of some, and the neatness and elegance of others, and that especially if they be small; the fitness to answer useful ends; their answering a multiplicity of these by simple means, or by analogous complex ones, not exceeding certain limits in complexness; the knowledge conveyed in many cases; the strong associations with religion, death, war, justice, power, riches, titles, high birth, entertainments, mirth, &c. fashion, with the opinions and encomiums of persons supposed to be judges; the vain desire of having a taste, and of being thought connoisseurs and judges, &c. &c.
In architecture there are certain proportions of breadths, lengths, depths, and entire magnitudes, to each other, which are by some supposed to be naturally beautiful, just as the simple ratios of 1 to 2, 2 to 3, 3 to 4, &c. in music, yield sounds which are naturally pleasant to the ear. But it rather seems to me, that economical convenience first determined the ratios of doors, windows, pillars, &c. in a gross way, and then that the convenience of the artist fixed this determination to some few exact ratios, as in the proportion between the lengths and breadths of the pillars of the several orders. Afterwards these proportions
