him intimately. At one period of his life, too, when he became the disinterested patron of remote and injured nations, who had none to help them, his character was truly sublime; but unless upon those whom he so ably and eloquently arraigned, I do not believe that it impressed any awe . . . If, during this period, he had suddenly appeared among the managers in Westminster Hall without his wig and coat, or had walked up St. James's-street without his breeches, it would have occasioned great and universal astonishment; and if he had, at the same time, carried a loaded blunderbuss in his hands, the astonishment would have been mixed with no small portion of terror: but I do not believe that the united effects of these two powerful passions would have produced any sentiment or sensation approaching to sublime, even in the breasts of those, who had the strongest sense of self-preservation and the quickest sensibility of danger."

Thus, I believe, it now appears that novelty is the exciting cause of pleasurable emotion and of the consequent perception of beauty in the relations of things, and that the two genera of beauty, the minor or subordinate beauty, and grandeur or sublimity, have distinct characteristics, the confounding of which by writers has led to the obscurity of this part of the subject.

CHAPTER V.

STANDARD OF TASTE IN BEAUTY.

THE expression, "standard of taste," is used to signify the basis or foundation of our judgments, respecting beauty and deformity, and their consequent certainty.

Setting aside such objection as might be raised to a standard of taste on the doctrine of Berkeley (which I refuted in 1809, and which I need not enter into here), this matter was long ago settled by David Hume; and I have nothing new to say upon the subject (there is probably enough of novelty in other chapters, whatever its worth may be), except that Burke appears to have borrowed all he knew about it from that incomparably more profound philosopher.

As I ought not, however, to omit here a view of the subject, I cannot do better than transcribe the words of Hume and Burke respectively. While this will put the reader in possession of all

that I think necessary upon this subject, it will farther tend to show in what Burke's ability as a philosopher consisted.

"taste,

I must first, however, observe that the word as expressing our judgment of beauty, is a metaphor whimsically borrowed from the lowest of our senses, and is applied to our exercise of that faculty, as regards both natural objects, and the fine arts which imitate these.

It is not wonderful that the variety and inconstancy of tastes respecting the attributes and the characters of beauty should have led many philosophers to deny that there exist any certain combinations of forms and of effects to which the term beauty ought to be invariably attached.

In his Philosophical Dictionary, Voltaire, after quoting some nonsense from the crazy dreamer who did so much injury to Greek philosophy, says, I am willing to believe that nothing can be more beautiful than this discourse of Plato; but it does not give us very clear ideas of the nature of the beautiful. Ask of a toad what is beauty, pure beauty, the To kaλov; he will answer you that it is his female, with two large round eyes projecting from her little head, a large and flat throat, a yellow belly and a brown back. Ask the devil, and he will tell you that the beautiful is a pair of horns, four claws and a tail.

Consult, lastly, the philosophers, and they will answer you by rigmarole: they want something conformable to the archetype of the beautiful in essence, to the TO Kaλov." This is wit, not reason: let us look for that to a deeper thinker, as proposed above.

David Hume says, "It appears that, amidst all the variety and caprice of taste, there are certain general principles of approbation or blame, whose influence a careful eye may trace in all operations of the mind. Some particular forms or qualities, from the original structure of the internal fabric, are calculated to please, and others to displease... If they fail of their effect in any particular instance, it is from some apparent defect or imperfection in the organ.

"In each creature there is a sound and a defective state; and the former alone can be supposed to afford us a true standard of taste and sentiment. If, in the sound state of the organ, there be an entire or a considerable uniformity of sentiment among men, we may thence derive an idea of the perfect beauty; in like manner as the appearance of objects in day-light, to the eye of a man in health, is denominated their true and real colour."

To the same purpose writes Burke, after some preliminary observations.

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All the natural powers in man, which I know, that are conversant about external objects, are the senses, the imagination, and the judgment.

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First, with regard to the senses. We do and we must suppose, that as the conformations of their organs are nearly, or altogether the same in all men, so the manner of perceiving external objects is in all men the same, or with little difference.

"As there will be little doubt that bodies present similar images to the whole species, it must necessarily be allowed, that the pleasures and the pains which every object excites in one man, it must raise in all mankind, whilst it operates naturally, simply, and by its proper powers only.

Custom, and some other causes, have made many deviations from the natural pleasures or pains which belong to these several tastes; but then the power of distinguishing between the natural and the acquired relish remains to the very last.

There is in all men a sufficient remembrance of the original natural causes of pleasure, to enable them to bring all things offered to their senses to that standard, and to regulate their feelings and opinions by it.

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Suppose one who had so vitiated his palate