the gout; so I made a fine quiz of his spurs.-So much for the Deputy's dress: as to hers, imagine her elephant waist (if you can) screw'd and rivetted down in stays à la Diane; an Oldenburg bonnet, and carbuncle face, like a coal-skuttle holding a melon; a brace of fat fubby arms all pucker and puff; her petticoats scolloped with flounces enough to cover her knee; and, to finish the whole, conceive an umbrageous red parasol, with a fringe of pea-green!

But Brighton appears to level all ranks, all distinctions of years: the blackleg and rustic, the peer and the cit, all gladly conspire to exhibit their wit in killing the general enemy Time. To accomplish this object, some cheerfully climb up the neighbouring hills in the heat of the day; some, mounted in donkey carts, listlessly stray to the villages round; some, sweltering, ride on Jerusalem ponies; and all coincide that, when they have toiled to the object in view, it wasn't worth seeing. An indolent few lounge the whole of their morning away on the Steyne,—or skim a romance in a bathing machine,—or wager at billiards, or lollop about in their library rooms, whence they seldom come out till they've got all the papers by heart.

Thus it's clear (at least to my judgment), that pleasure is here the greatest of torments: the tyrant Ennui throws a gloom over all ;-it is easy to see that the killers of time (as they vainly conceive) are themselves being killed; and indeed, I believe there's a great deal of truth in the common remark, that the busiest people are always—but, hark !the ringing of

bells and the firing of guns, proclaim that the King is come down, and, for once, his Majesty's welcomed with shouts of applause. A reception like this is an adequate cause for my breaking off short, as you know such a sight may never return. Perhaps I may write another epistle to-morrow, till when, always Your's faithfully,

W. N.

P. S.-O! such a discovery, Jenny !-just now brother Tom, (who's a bit of a poet, you know,) looking over my letter, exclaimed with an oath, that 'twas written in numbers; and though I was loath to think I could scribble my nonsense in rhyme, and never observe it the whole of the time, yet I find it will run in the Ansteyan measure; so pray lay it by as a wonderful treasure!

MORAL AND MATERIAL BEAUTY.

Beauty is exterior virtue; and Virtue is interior beauty."

"It is pleasing to observe the uniformity of nature in all her operations. Between moral and material beauty and harmony, between moral and material deformity and dissonance, there obtains a very striking analogy.-The visible and audible expréssions of every virtuous emotion are agreeable to the eye and the ear, and those of almost every criminal passion disagreeable. The looks, the attitudes, and the vocal sounds, natural to benevolence, to gratitude, to compassion, to piety, are in themselves graceful

and pleasing; while anger, discontent, despair, and cruelty, bring discord to the voice, deformity to the features, and distortion to the limbs. That flowing curve which painters know to be essential to the beauty of animal shape, gives place to a multiplicity of right lines and sharp angles in the countenance and gesture of him who knits his brows, stretches his nostrils, grinds his teeth, and clenches his fist; whereas devotion, magnanimity, benevolence, contentment, and good humour, soften the attitude, and give a graceful swell to the outline of every feature. Certain vocal tones accompany certain mental emotions: the voice of sorrow is feeble and broken, that of despair boisterous and incoherent; joy assumes a sweet and sprightly tone, fear a weak and tremulous cadence; the tones of love and benevolence are musical and uniform, those of rage loud and dissonant, &c."*

In asserting that there is any general uniformity in the system of nature, any tendency to accordance between the moral and material worlds, the Author of the foregoing observations appears to have started with a most inadmissible assumption; for this imputed harmony of purpose is so far from being warranted by fact, that the glaring inconsistency of the two schemes, the physical and the moral, has excited the astonishment of various writers and philosophers, from the time of Claudian downwards. Order, beauty, regularity, and exquisite adaptation of means to ends, are the characteristics of the former; confusion, casualty, injustice, and mystery, are too often percep

* Encyclopædia Britannica, p. 780.

tible in the latter: and the obvious incompleteness of this dispensation is one of the strongest arguments that it cannot be final, but preparatory to a more perfect state of existence. Nor can we give assent to his subsequent deductions without a world of reservation, because he has omitted to distinguish with sufficient accuracy the difference between intrinsic and relative beauty, between the visible and invisible, between that which is in the object, and that which we convey to it from ourselves by association. Strictly speaking, beauty should be exclusively visual; but the senses are so blended with one another, and the whole with the understanding, that it becomes almost impossible for the eye to enjoy the pleasures of its peculiar province without some extrinsic interference or suggestion. What object of sight is there that can be altogether divested of association, mediate or immediate, grateful or unpleasant? Hardly one. It may enter your eye in the first instance as a simple disconnected form, but a moment's reflection as to its history or purpose converts it into a concrete; and no thinking being can prevent this process, although it is very conceivable that it may be avoided by the stolid stare of a 66 goose on a common, or cow on a green." It follows as a necessary consequence that there can be no such thing as a standard of beauty, since hardly any object is judged by its inherent merits, but by some adventitious sentiment, contributed by the beholder, and which will of course vary according to the diversity of persons, or even to the changeful moods of the same party.

Let us take the face of Nature, whose beauty we may analyze with the more impartiality, because it cannot excite either love or jealousy. There must be something wanting in the intellectual, almost in the bodily, organization of that man, who can look out upon the glorious pageant of the world without being struck with admiration and delight at the prospect of the green and flowery earth, the flashing waters, and the sunlighted sky; not for that beauty which an animal eye can embrace as fully as a man's, but because those objects, harmonizing with the warbling of birds, the lowing of cattle, the soft murmur of the wind, the tinkling of the running brooks, and the perfume of flowers, not only make our other senses partakers in the eye's banquet, but recreate the understanding also, by impressing it with the complacency of the surrounding happiness, and raising it to the benevolent and Almighty dispenser of so many blessings. This is, perhaps, the finest and most intense union of sensual and sentimental gratification of which our nature is susceptible.—But this is to contemplate Nature in her smiles; and, according to the analogy of the writer from whom our opening extract was made, there should be nothing but a correspondent distortion, dissonance, and deformity, in her frowns. The black and threatening sky, the roar of the thunder, the hoarseness of the torrent, the screaming of birds, the bellowing of cattle, ought to be all in strict character with the ungraceful posture of the broken or prostrate flowers, and the wrenched angular outlines of the reverted boughs; but this is a theoretical conceit, for, to the