ed his superstitious turn of mind, and the unhappy prejudices, which induced him to censure some of those, of whom "the world was not worthy," and with whose true character he was unacquainted. He was deeply tinged with a predilection for the Roman hierarchy; he had imbibed most of those_errours of his time, which were not directly subversive of the Gospel; and the monastick character, which, according to the spirit of the age, appeared to be the greatest glory, seems to have much eclipsed his real virtues, and prevented his progress in true evangelical wisdom. But if we strip him of the ascetick vest, and consider the interiour endowments, he will appear to have been no mean or ordinary character. His learning was but moderate; his understanding was solid, and his judgment seldom erred in subjects or cases where the prejudices of the age did not warp the imagination. His genius was truly sublime, his temper sanguine, his mind active and vigorous. The love of God appears to have taken deep root in his soul, and seems to have been always steady, though always ardent. His charity was equal to his zeal; and his tenderness and compassion to Christian brethren, went hand in hand with his severity against the heretical, the profane, and the vicious. In humility, he was truly admirable; he scarce seems to have felt a glimpse of pleasure, on account of the extravagant praises every where bestowed upon him. His heart felt dependence on Christ, and his heavenly affections were incontestibly strong. He united much true Christian knowledge, with much superstition; and this can hardly be accounted for on any other supposition, than that he was directed by an influence truly divine. For there is not an essential doctrine of the Gospel, which he did not embrace with zeal, defend by argument, and adorn by life. Socinianism in particular, under God, was by his means, nipped in the bud, and prevented from thriving in the Christian world. Such was Bernard, who is generally called the last of the fathers. The accounts of his death, considered as compositions, are no less disgusting to a taste of tolerable correctness, than those of his life. While his friends admired him as an angel, he felt himself, by nature, a sinful fallen creature. He was about sixty-three years old, when he died of a disease in the stomach. À letter which he dictated to a friend, a very few days before his decease, will be worth our attention, as a genuine monument of that simplicity, modesty, and piety, which had adorned his conversation. "I received your love, with affection, I cannot say with pleasure; for what pleasure can there be to a person in my circumstances, replete with bitterness? To eat nothing solid, is the only way to preserve myself tolerably easy. My sensitive powers adinit of no further pleasure. Sleep hath departed from my eyes, and prevented the least intermission of my pain. Stomachick weakness is, as it were, the sum total of my afflictions. By day and night I receive a small portion of liquids. Every thing solid, the stomach rejects. The very scanty supply, which I now and then receive, is painful; but perfect emptiness would be still more so. If now and then I take in a larger quantity, the effect is most distressing. My legs and feet are swoln, as in a dropsy. In the midst of these afflictions, that I may hide nothing from an anxious friend, in my inner man, (I speak as a vulgar person,) the spirit is ready, though the flesh be weak. Pray ye to the Saviour, who willeth not the death of a sinner, that he would not delay my timely exit, but that still he would guard it. Fortify with your prayers a poor unworthy creature, that the enemy who lies in wait, may find no place where he may fix his tooth, and inflict a wound. These words I have dictated, but in such a manner, that ye may know my affection by a hand well known to you." Such were the dying circumstances of this excellent saint. So peculiarly were they disposed, that they seemed to rebuke the ignorant admiration of his friends; and thus, through faith and patience, did he at length inherit the promises. FROM THE CHRISTIAN OBSERVER. Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste. By ARCHIBALD ALISON, LL.D. F. R. S. London and Edinburgh, Prebendary of Sarum, &c. IF any of our readers feel a disposition to complain, that we are in some measure breaking bounds, by entering upon the examination of a work with the title of that before us, we beg them to suspend their judgment till they understand the system of Mr. Alison, and have done us the favour of considering our poor observations upon it. If a more general objection be urged to any review of a work originally published in 1790, it may be answered, that this publication never met with the attention it appears to us to deserve; that it has been republished with some additions, within a few months; that the publick eye has been lately fixed upon it, by a very splendid critick in a periodical work; and that the work itself, whilst it yields some advantage to religion, will derive much by being brought into a closer contact with it. It will be our endeavour, in the following critick, first, to present, as may suit us best, in his words and by his machinery, or in our own, a faithful exhibition of the system of Mr. Alison; and then to carry the system and the subject of it, from the schools, as it were, to the temple; and, for a moment, examine its bearings upon those grand topicks, to which our labours are more especially consecrated. If the inquiry be made," what is taste?" it is frequently answered," that faculty by which we perceive or appreciate beauty." And if we ask, "what is beauty?" it is answered, " that quality which gratifies taste." Now, it is obvious, that the inquirer will not be much the wiser for these answers. And, accordingly, minds with any sprinkling of philosophy, or, indeed, of rational curiosity, have seldom stopped at this point of the inquiry. In repeating the question, "what is taste?" the examiner will find two classes of respondents, each of whom pretend to satisfy his curiosity by a more philosophical reply. Say the first, "Taste is a distinct sense, appropriated to the perception of beauty; beauty consists in certain peculiar lines, forms, colours, motions; and taste, like an eye, discovers and approves them." Such is the theory of most technical writers upon this subject of most painters, and sculptors, and architects; of Hogarth; of our distinguished countryman, Sir Joshua Reynolds; of the Abbe Winkleman. The second class of theorists, on the contrary, rejecting the idea of a peculiar sense, consider taste as the modification of some other simple emotion. One, for instance, perceiving the mind to be gratified by the perception of utility, resolves taste into a perception of utility. Another, in like manner, calls it the perception of relation; a third, the perception of design; a fourth, the perception of order and fitness. if This last class of theorists are chiefly to be condemned, as taking a part of the truth for the whole. Any one of their systems will solve some of the phenomena involved in the question before us, but no one of them will go near to solve all. We frequently perceive beauty or sublimity, where we do not perceive utility; or where there are no indications of relation or design; or where, there be a peculiar fitness for the end proposed, it is concealed from us. The champions of utility' have often been put to flight by the peacock's tail; those of design,' silenced by the fact, that a strong perception of design' in the artist, frequently destroys the beauty or sublimity of the performance; and those of fitness,' have been confounded by the necessity of acknowledging the beauty of many objects, which, as far as we know any thing of them, are fit for nothing in the world but to be looked at. It is perfectly compatible with the theory of Mr. Alison, as will be seen, to allow all the range to these several systems which belongs to them. He distinctly admits, that the perception of utility, design, fitness, may promote the emotion of taste. If he errs at all upon the point, it is, that in the course of his triumphant career, he sometimes suffers his system to run away with him, and then tramples a little upon that class of perceptions which, in calmer moments, he is disposed to treat with due reverence. To the other class of theorists who resolve taste into a distinct sense, and beauty and sublimity into certain material qualities, as lines, colours, motions, &c., it is the peculiar object of the present work to reply; and, in our judgment, the refutation is complete; not, indeed, that this work assumes any thing of a controversial aspect; and this is one of its many merits. The author has felt, that the establishment of his own system is the best refutation of every other; and, in a work on taste, has proved his own possession of that faculty, by not kindling in his readers those bad passions which so ill harmonize with the exquisite scenes of nature, and productions of art, to which he introduces them. We shall now proceed to develop his system to our readers, reserving to ourselves, however, the liberty of passing over what is not material, and of taking any short cut to a point to which the author travels by a circuitous course. We forewarn our readers also, that no analysis of ours can do justice to the merits of the original work. They have here, however, a sort of rude skeleton, and if they wish to see it very beautifully clothed, we beg them to turn from the reviewer to the author. The theory, then, of Mr Alison, is simply this; that the beauty or sublimity of any object is not to be ascribed to its material qualities, but to certain other qualities of which these are the signs or expressions, and which are fitted, by the constitution of our nature, to produce pleasing or interesting emotion; and that beauty or sublimity are not perceived till both such pleasing or interesting emotions are excited, and the imagination is stimulated to conceive a train of ideas corresponding with these emotions. In the establishment of this theory, the first proposition which the author sets himself to prove is, that where the imagination is not excited or set to work, beauty or sublimity are not perceived, or, in other words, the emotion of taste is not felt. The illustrations of which this admits, are numerous: for instance, if peculiar circumstances, such as grief or sickness, check the workings of the imagination, objects the most admired, seem, at once, to be shorn of all their beauty. The beauties of poetry, of painting, and even of nature, fade in the eyes of the traitor who has forfeited his life, or the parent who has lost her child: the imagination is here chained to a point, and all its sensibility exhausted upon one subject. In like manner, certain employments, by fettering the movements of the imagination, destroy the perception of beauty; as the critick, who is employed in detecting the faults of language or of editorship in a poem, almost ceases to discern its beauty; or as the purchaser of any tract of the most picturesque country, in the act of proportioning guineas, (if there were any such thing,) to acres, forgets the fairy scenery which, perhaps, had originally seduced him to purchase. In the same way, there is a certain constitution of mind which seems to disenchant all scenes and objects of the beauties which others discern in them: the mere calculator sees nothing in the face of nature, but the value of her productive surface; the philosophizer regards all objects in the dry shape of materials for thinking; in youth, when the imagination is all awake, beauty or sublimity are easily recognised and strongly felt, while the old sit calmly by, and, perhaps, expatiate with wonder upon the enthusiasm of youth. But if the beauty or sublimity resided in the scenes or objects themselves, could all this variety exist in the perception of different individuals, or of the same individual at different periods? There are other instances which tend to the same result. To whom do not his associations with certain scenes and objects enhance their beauty? The scenes of our infancy, the songs of our native country, the residence of those once dear to us, have all a factitious beauty for us. Could an Englishman behold Runny mede, or the fields of Agincourt and Blenheim, without discovering a sort of charm spread over them, which lent the scene new lustre in his eyes? All other beauty may, indeed, be lost in that thus adventitiously communicated. Thus De Lisle, in describing Vaucluse: "Mais ces eaux, ce beau ciel, ce vallon enchanteur, Moins que Petrarque et Laure interessoient mon cœur.-- But the author here pleads his own cause too eloquently to permit us any longer to speak for him. "The delight which most men of education receive from the consideration of antiquity, and the beauty that they discover in every object which is connected with ancient times, is in a great measure to be ascribed to the same cause. The antiquarian, in his cabinet, surrounded by the relicks of former ages, seems to himself to be removed to periods that are long since past, and indulges in the imagination of living in a world, which, by a very natural kind of prejudice, we are always willing to believe was both wiser and better than the present. All that is venerable or laudable in the history of these times present themselves to his memory. The gallantry, the heroism, the patriotism of antiquity, rise again before his view, softened by the obscurity in which they are involved, and rendered more seducing to the imagination by that obscurity itself, which, while it mingles a sentiment of regret amid his pursuits, serves at the same time to stimulate his fancy to fill up, by its own creation, those long intervals of time, of which history has preserved no record. The relicks he contemplates seem to approach him still nearer to the ages of his regard. The dress, the furniture, the arms of the times, are so many assistances to his imagination, in guiding or directing its exercise; and, offering him a thousand sources of imagery, provide him with an almost inexhaustible field in which his memory and his fancy may expatiate. There are few men who have not felt somewhat, at least, of the delight of such an employment. There is no man in the least acquainted with the history of antiquity, who does not love to let his imagination loose on the prospect of its remains, and to whom they are not in some measure sacred, from the innumerable images which they bring. Even the peasant, whose knowledge of former times extends but to a few generations, has yet in his village some monument of the deeds or virtues of his forefathers; and cherishes with a fond veneration, the memorial of those good old times to which his imagination returns with delight, and of which he loves to recount the simple tales that tradition has brought him. "And what is it that constitutes that emotion of sublime delight, which every man of common sensibility feels upon the first prospect of Rome? It is not the scene of destruction which is before him. It is not the Tiber, diminished in his imagination to a paltry stream, flowing amid the ruins of that magnificence which it once adorned. It is not the triumph of superstition over the wreck of human greatness, and its monuments erected upon the very spot where the first honours of humanity have been gained. It is ancient Rome which fills his imagination. It is the country of Cæsar, and Cicero, and Virgil, which is before him. It is the mistress of the world which he sees, and who seems to him to rise again from her tomb, to give laws to the universe. All that the labours of his youth, or the studies of his maturer age have acquired, with regard to the history of this great people, open at once before his imagination, and present him with a field of high and solemn imagery, which can never be exhausted. Take from him these associations, conceal from him that it is Rome that he sees, and how different would be his emotion.” Vol. i. pp. 39–42. Although much might be added under this head, neither less striking nor less eloquent, we hasten on to the second position taken by the author. It is evident, that all exercise of the imagination does not lead to the emotion of taste. Many objects excite a train of ideas in the mind, which yet excite no emotion of pleasure. The ideas which are excited by objects of beauty and sublimity, have two peculiarities. 1. They are "ideas of emotion," |