ON THE ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES OF BEAUTY. THE following remarks upon the elementary principles of beauty, were written by a person not intimate with the various theories upon this subject, which are contained in a multitude of ancient and modern books, and under circumstances that suggested the thought of beauty by the intimation of contrast, as Rousseau says he formed the conceptions of the fair friends, Julie and Clara, from the presence and conversation of his degraded wife and her mother. If they afford any original views or illustrations of a hacknied subject, they may be interesting to those, particularly, who love to analyze the taste, which, under an infinity of modifications, is allotted to man as the richest luxury and purest refinement of his intellectual being; and which, under the influences of education and habit, is common, in divers measures and degrees, to the young and the old, the rich and the poor. None but the extremely neglected, and extremely corrupted portions of mankind, can look without any discrimination and preference upon all the works of nature, and all the creations of art. All these have their distinctive character, and the eye of every intelligent beholder rests upon each with more or less satisfaction, as his mind has been cultivated and his heart ennobled. Spiritual, moral, and physical beauty, have all a relation and correspondence. God, who said, let there be light and there was light, who made the fair world and all the stars sang together, is the very origin and centre of beauty. He, and his elements, his designs and their results, comprehend the whole display and the whole sentiment of beauty; if we add to these what is effected by him, "God's image," who is admitted to be worker together with him in all things that exalt and make human life better. Physical beauty, or the beauty of objects which speak to the moral sense through the eye, is always referred to this agency of first and second causes, and in this view may be entirely reduced to simplicity, and to the sentiment of felicity, as perhaps may every species of beauty. A few of the facts which lead to this conclusion, are presented in this short essay. Simplicity in beauty, consists in the absence of every thing not strictly and properly belonging to the object--as a fine complexion is one of a pure colour, without any, even the least, excrescence or blemish, and in exact fitness, which is a quality of simplicity, of the beautiful thing to its proper uses, when the uses of the thing are the production of pleasure. woman is a rational, susceptible being, formed to enjoy pleaVOL. II. 50 Α sures of reason, passion, sympathy, and sense; her perfection consists in the sensibility and improveableness, in the developement and cultivation of every animal, intellectual, and moral attribute of her nature. Health, activity, thought, conscious dignity and benevolence, and that poetic enthusiasm which unites things heavenly with the earthly in the imagination, are the essential qualities of the perfect female; and when these are expressed in the figure and features of any living being, of any statue or picture, if it should indicate the period of maturity anterior to decay, it would be "with perfect beauty adorned." The associated attribute of a living being of this class, is the expression of wide intelligence, a something which intimates the sense of dignity by comparison and resemblance, and which combines the idea of the beautiful of other ages and countries with the modes of embellishing the person in present fashion. I wish, said a distinguished French woman, that my daughter may know enough of the fine arts, to transfuse the spirit of their gracefulness into her mind and manners, and that the style of her dress, without departing from the customs of her country, may be guided by that elegance which affords models for all countries. This lady certainly understood the art by which her daughter might add the fittest attraction to her natural charms. In the aspect of a truly beautiful human being, the beholder views a representation of the divine nature: the first fair is surely suggested to the imagination by one little lower than the angels, and who has received its appropriate exterior from the hand of God himself. This beautiful being exhibits the absence of all unworthiness, and the capability of all good-the purity and the power of goodness. The purity is the element of simplicity, the power is the suggestion of felicity; for the power expressed denotes all which sustains, embellishes, consoles, endears, and produces life. This is feminine beauty-genius is not included in it, nevertheless it may be exalted by genius; but this latter attribute, combining in itself high intelligence and powerful energy, superadds to beauty the character of sublimity, and is most suited to the stronger sex, though it is not uncommon in female beauty. A perfectly beautiful man or woman, shows the moral and intellectual perfection of the individual and of the species, and consequently the highest susceptibility of human happiness. The authority of that great master Spenser, may well serve to establish this principle: "Every spirit as it is most pure, And hath in it the more of heavenly light, So it the finer body doth procure For soul is form, and doth the body make." Whatever applies to the truth of nature, applies to the truth of imitative art-for they are one-so that the moral nature of beauty is as obvious in sculpture and painting as in life, and a moral illustration of one serves for all. The beauty of the earth's surface, of certain delicate mechanic productions, of the heavens, of distressing objects sometimes, of a fine style in writing, and of declamation, may not seem at first to express, principally, simplicity of design, and the idea of felicity-felicity, either consciously enjoyed, or unconsciously diffused. The latter condition of felicity is that which is proper to inanimate existence only, and which only appertains to the instruments of God's benevolent designs. The beauty of a new country consists in its capability of becoming subservient to the faculties and comfort of man, and in the evidence it affords of its present conduciveness to the enjoyment of innumerable living creatures. Could it be devested of all relation to life, what would it be? In connexion with life, the abundance and variety of its productions illustrate the liberality of God's bounties, and the intelligence, order, and harmony of all his purposes, in which he exhibits his own perfections, and his will to diffuse to all good gifts, which they may richly enjoy. The whole external world expresses happiness-God's happiness in making and giving it, and the happiness of man and the lower animals in accepting it from him. If it were not so, would primitive men have conse crated every mountain and valley, every running river, and every tree that overshadowed it? When the Hebrew poet looked forth upon the face of nature, he sung, "The springs of the valleys, which run among the hills, they give drink to every beast of the field-the grass which grows for the cattle, and herbs for the service of man-the trees where the birds make their nests, and sing among the branches-the high hills a refuge for the goats-the great and wide sea, wherein are things innumerable, both small and great beasts." What constitutes the objects of natural beauty but such objects-and for what cause are they felt to be beautiful, but for their relation to their maker, and the beings which they benefit? If it be asserted that distress may exhibit beauty, and happiness is no part of its nature; that a natural flower, or a piece of mosaic, exhibits beauty; that the blue heaven, with its va poury white fleece, its purple more gorgeous than robes of princes, its golden clouds more massy and lustrous than all the treasures of earth, is of surpassing beauty, and yet all these have no connexion with happiness. Should this form of objection to the principle contended for ever be raised, it is subject to refutation. In respect to a distressed object, the most beautiful and estimable one may be, the more does such a one interest us; we magnify the distress, and the compassion it excites is proportioned to the happiness suitable to the nature of a very sensitive and a very deserving being. Beauty, in descriptive poetry, is like painting. Who that reads Sir Walter Scott's description of Constance, in Marmion, does not represent her to himself as beautiful, and is not the more touched with her misfortunes, on account of her beauty? and, though she was not virtuous, "so young and fair was she," so capable of loving, so elevated to "high resolve and constancy," so foully corrupted, so treacherously forsaken, so cruelly punished, that all she might have been, and not what she was, the felicity she was formed to feel and afford, and not the deeds she did and meditated, make her the interesting creature for whose fate we shudder, and whose beauty is an exquisite and sensible image called up before the mind, at the least intimation of her poetic existence. The sympathetic admiration which gives an elevated character to pity, is always excited by the notions of sensibility and desert in the object. A flower exhibits great skill in its form, variety, and disposition of parts, and in its relative use to the plant of which it is a part, and all this to regale the sense of man, or not "wasting its sweetness on the desert air," because it does not inhale it, to afford sustenance and pleasure to the insect tribes. Is not the beauty of this class of objects connected, in our perception of it, with the humble yet multiplied and delicate pleasures which they afford? The mosaic requires for its production, patience, skill, industry, and sometimes very fine organs in the artist; it is the result of intellectual means and faculties that are serviceable, and indeed necessary, in the production of whatever is useful in life. Our whole enjoyment of the beautiful is graduated accordingly to the respective degrees of intelligence and benevolent design, connected in our minds with the first creation of the work we admire, or by the faculties of secondary and subsequent causes, which have been employed upon it. For instance, with what very different sentiments will a person of taste behold that noble image, the Apollo, or call up from his memory the descriptions given of man by Mil ton and Shakspeare, which are as perfect in their kind as the work of the chisel; or look upon the finest piece of French china that ever was made. He undervalues neither, but his admiration of both is regulated by the best and wisest judgment of a sound mind. In respect to the beauty of the heavens, it is not estranged from the thought of consciousness and felicity in any mind. The vaulted sky is the abode of that glorious light, without which beauty could not exist, and which devotion and poetry make the dwelling-place of celestial and happy natures, with which God, in the imagination of David, was clothed as with a garment; and this sublime arch is hung with those clouds which seemed to him the chariots of divine majesty; and not to him alone, "As the gilt cloud rolled its glory by, Chariots and steeds of flame stood harnessed there, And gods came forth and seized the golden reins.” But other men, not taught like him, have seen the " azure fields and starry plains," lit up by the countenance of an infinite deity. Joanna Baillie sees a beautiful white cloud, resting a moment in its pure element, and to her it appears, "As though an angel, in his upward flight, Had left his mantle floating in mid air.” And an English poet, long before Miss Baillie's time, wrote thus: "I not believe that the great architect, With all these fires the heavenly arches decked And that the glorious stars of heaven have none."* The pleasure derived from the beauty of an elegant house, tasteful grounds, expressive or faithful pictures, statues, poetry, or declamation, is a tribute of our minds and hearts to fine powers of other men, because they tend to "fine issues;" because these powers, with adequate instruments, have effected results which produce the comfort and ornament of our lives, and supply us with a high intellectual gratification. If we find any beauty in pictures of disagreeable objects, it is derived from * Sylvester. From Campbell's Essay on English poetry. |