conscious of all the powers with which he is animated, and yet to restrain them from some principle of beneficence, or of dignity. Every movement of the stag almost is beautiful, from the fineness of his form, and the ease of his gestures; yet it is not in these or in the heat of the chase that he is graceful: it is when he pauses upon some eminence in the pursuit, when he erects his crested head, and when, looking with disdain upon the enemy who follow, he bounds to the freedom of his hills. It is not, in the same manner, in the rapid speed of the eagle when he darts upon his prey, that we perceive the Grace of which his motions are capable. It is when he soars slowly upwards to the sun, or when he wheels with easy and continuous motion in airy circles in the sky.

In the personification which we naturally give to all inanimate objects which are susceptible of movement, we may easily perceive the influence of the same association.

We speak commonly, for instance, of the graceful motions of trees, and of the graceful movements of a river. It is never, however, when these motions are violent or extreme, that we apply to them the term of Grace. It is the gentle waving of the tree in slow and measured cadence which is graceful, not the tossing of its branches amid the storm. It is the slow and easy winding which is graceful in the movements of the river, and not the burst of the cataract, or the fury of the torrent.

SECTION VI.

Conlusion of this Essay-Of the Final Cause of this Constitution of our Nature.

THE illustrations that have been offered in the course of this ESSAY upon the origin of the SUBLIMITY and BEAUTY of some of the principal qualities of MATTER, seem to afford sufficient evidence for the following conclusions:

I. That each of these qualities is either from nature, from experience, or from accident, the sign of some quality capable of producing Emotion, or the exercise of some moral affection.

And,

II. That when these associations are dissolved, or in other words, when the materiål qualities cease to be significant of the associated qualities, they cease also to pro

duce the emotions, either of Sublimity or Beauty.

If these conclusions are admitted, it appears necessarily to follow, that the Beauty and Sublimity of such objects is to be ascribed not to the material qualities themselves, but to the qualities they signify; and of consequence, that the qualities of matter are not to be considered as sublime or beautiful in themselves, but as being the SIGNS OF EXPRESSIONS of such qualities, as, by the constitution of our nature, are fitted to produce pleasing or interesting emotion.

The opinion I have now stated coincides, in a great degree, with a DocTRINE that appears very early to have distinguished the PLATONIC School; which is to be traced, perhaps, (amid their dark and figurative language), in all the philosophical systems of the East, and which has been maintained in this country, by several writers of eminence, by Lord Shaftesbury, Dr Hutche son, Dr Akenside, and Dr Spence, but

which has nowhere so firmly and so philosophically been maintained as by Dr Reid in his invaluable work ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS OF MAN. The doctrine to which I allude is, that matter is not beautiful in itself, but derives its Beauty from the expression of MIND.

As this doctrine, however, when stated in general terms, has somewhat the air of paradox, I shall beg leave, in a few words, to explain in what sense I understand and adopt it, by enumerating what appear to me the principal classes of this expression, or the principal means by which the qualities of matter become significant to us of those qualities of mind which are destined to affect us with pleasing or interesting emotion.

The qualities of MIND which are capable of producing emotion, are either its ACTIVE, or its PASSIVE qualities; either its powers and capacities, as beneficence, wisdom, fortitude, invention, fancy, &c. or its feelings D d

VOL. II.