Funereas agitat cupressos. Piabit orbem, lætaque secula Mundo reducet, talis aura Æthereos animos fovebit. Salve fugacis gloria feculi, Et specimen venientis Ævi. National associations have a similar effect, in increase ing the emotions of sublimity and beauty, as they very obviously increase the number of images presented to the mind. The fine lines which Virgil has dedicated in his Georgics, to the praises of his native country, however beautiful to us, were yet undoubtedly read with a far superiour emotion by an ancient Roman. The prodigies which the same poet has described, as preceding the death of Cæsar, and the still more minute description which Lucan, in the first book of his Pharsalia, has given of such events, on the approach of the civil war, must probably have given to a Roman, who was under the dominion of such national superstitions, the strongest emotions of sublimity and terror. But we read them now without any other emotion, than what arises from the beauty of the composition. The influence of such associations, in increasing either the beauty or sublimity of musical composition, can hardly have escaped any person's observation. The tune called Belleisle March is said, by a very eminent writer, to have owed its popularity among the people of England to the supposition, that it was the tune which was played, when the English army marched into Belleisle, and to its consequent association with images of fame, and conquest, and military glory. There are other tunes of the same character, which, without any peculiar merit, yet always serve to please the people, whenever they are performed. The natives of any country, which possess es a national or characteristic music, need not be remind ed how strongly the performance of such airs brings back to them the imagery of their native land; and must often have had occasion to remark how inferior an emotion they excite in those who are strangers to such associations. The effect of the celebrated national song, which is said to have overpowered the Swiss soldier in a foreign land, with melancholy and despair, and which it is therefore found necessary to forbid in the armies in which they serve, cannot surely be attributed to its composition alone, but to the recollections that it brings, and to those images that it kindles in his mind, of peace, and freedom, and domestic pleasure, from which he is torn, and to which he may never return. Whatever Whatever may be the sublimity of Handel's music, the singular effect of it on some late occasions is, doubtless, not to be ascribed to that sublimity alone, but in a peculiar manner to the place where it was performed; not only from the sacredness of that place, which is, of itself, so well fitted to excite many awful emotions; but in a considerable degree also, from its being the repository of so many " illustrious dead," and the scene, perhaps of all others, most sacred to those who have any sensibility to the glories of their country. There are associations, also, which arise from particular professions, or habits of thought, which serve very well to illustrate the same observation. No man, in general, is sensible to beauty, in those subjects with regard to which he has not previous ideas. The beauty of a the ory, or of a relic of antiquity, is unintelligible to a peasant. The charms of the country are altogether lost upon a citizen who has passed his life in town. In the same manner, the more that our ideas are increased, or our con ceptions extended upon any subject, the greater the number of associations we connect with it, the stronger is the emotion of sublimity or beauty we receive from it. The pleasure, for instance, which the generality of mankind receive from any celebrated painting, is trifling when compared to that which a painter feels, if he is a man of any common degree of candour. What is, to them, only an accurate representation of nature, is, to him, a beautiful exertion of genius, and a perfect display of art. The difficulties which occur to his mind in the design and execution of such a performance, and the testimonies of skill, of taste, and of invention, which the accomplishment of it exhibits, excite a variety of emotions in his breast, of which the common spectator is altogether unsusceptible; and the admiration with which he thus contemplates the genius and art of the painter, blends itself with the peculiar emotions which the picture itself can produce, and enhances to him every beau. ty that it may possess. The beauty of any scene in nature is seldom so strik. ing to others, as it is to a landscape painter, or to those who profess the beautiful art of laying out grounds. The difficulties both of invention and execution, which from their professions are familiar to them, render the profu sion with which nature often scatters the most pictur esque beauties, little less than miraculous. Every little circumstance of form and perspective, and light and shade, which are unnoticed by a common eye, are important in theirs, and mingling in their minds the ideas of difficulty, and facility in overcoming it, produce altogether an emotion of delight, incomparably more animated than any that the generality of mankind usually derive from it. 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 relics 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 relics he contemplates seem to ap proach 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 honest inexhaustible field in which his memory and his fancy may expatiate, There are few men who have not felt some, what, 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 genera, tions, 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. 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! II. All The effect which is thus produced, by associations, in increasing the emotions of sublimity or beauty, is produced also, either in nature, or in description, by what are generally termed picturesque objects. Instances of such objects are familiar to every one's observation, An old tower in the middle of a deep wood, a |