most refined and elegant taste, if they are equally attentive to its cultivation.

Our ideas of beauty are obviously derived from those pleasing and delightful emotions which it excites in the mind; but as it is difficult to awaken these emotions in a man who possesses but little natural sensibility, so must such a man not only have most difficulty in arriving at just ideas of the qualities that belong to it, because he has most difficulty in consulting those feelings from which its perceptions are derived, but also his small stock of natural sensibility is long exhausted before he can acquire an idea of those more perfect forms of beauty to which only a refined and cultivated taste can ever arrive. This refined and cultivated taste can, therefore, be acquired only by men who have originally a great portion of natural sensibility, however this original portion may be afterwards diminished, or the keenness of its delights tempered and modified by the cultivation of taste.

Had Mr. Stuart attended to this truth, he would not have been led into so important an error on the subject of taste. Too much sensibility he considers unfavourable to taste, but yet makes a certain portion of it necessary to the attainment of a refined taste. What this certain portion is, he does not attempt to define: he only thinks that too small a portion of it is as unfavourable to a

refined taste as too much. To this supposition he was, no doubt, led, by perceiving that those who have little natural sensibility, have never acquired a correct and elegant taste; and that, on the other hand, he saw this correct and elegant taste as seldom united to an ardent and glowing sensibility. It is certain, however, that whatever portion of sensibility nature has imparted to any man, it may exist during life, unaccompanied by taste, if its possessor does not give himself the habit of attending to the manner in which he finds himself affected by different models, or forms of beauty, so that taste is not necessarily connected with sensibility in any of its degrees; and he who gives himself this habit of attention will soon find his natural sensibility less " feelingly alive to each fine impulse," so that, as I have already observed, by the time his taste is completely formed, that extreme ardour of feeling which he experienced in his more untutored years, is less sensibly felt, or rather it is now ripened into a manly and rational habit of estimating, through the medium of reason and experience, and not through the delusive colouring of a glowing imagination, the just degree of influence which the beauties of nature and of art ought to possess over him. The chaste, manly, and elevated feelings which a man experiences after his taste is formed, compared to those which

spread a pleasing and agreeable tumult over his soul, in the undiscriminating season of youth and inexperience, may be aptly compared to the rich and luxuriant productions of Autumn, contrasted with the green and enchanting, but as yet unprized, and unproductive generations of Spring; and as every season has blessings peculiar to itself, so it is not to be doubted, but that the pleasing delusions of youth and inexperience are happily exchanged, in our riper years, for those more correct, more dignified, and more rational feelings which belong to a refined and cultivated taste. Sensibility, however, though as distinct from taste as the mind is from ideas, is the only basis on which a correct taste ever was, or ever will be founded. Many of the numberless errors that have been adopted on the subject of taste and sensibility, have entirely originated from not attending to the revolution that takes place in our youthful emotions during the cultivation of taste. The more frequently we appeal to that warm and glowing sensibility which is affected by the perception of beauty, the less keenly and sensibly does it respond to our appeal, though the perception of beauty is rendered more penetrating and acute. Nothing can place this truth in a clearer light, than the revived ardour and enthusiasm which we feel on resuming some favourite study which we had long neglected. He who

unremittingly applies himself to any literary pursuit, and, from the pleasure which he enjoyed when he first engaged in it, determines never to desist till he becomes complete master of it, will soon find himself overpowered in the prosecution of his design. He perceives his energies of application become daily more and more languid: his mind is continually, though unconsciously straying to other scenes of contemplation; and he frequently rises from study, surprised to find that he has not added a particle of information to what he knew at sitting down. If, however, he should impose such restrictions on his mind as to force it to an exclusive attention to a study from which it is perpetually endeavouring to withdraw itself, it is not improbable but this violence which he offers to the efforts which the mind makes to release itself from a dull and stupid uniformity of pursuit, or rather which he offers to that particular faculty in man, whatever it be, that equally loathes uniformity and variety, unless blended with each other, may, at length, create an insurmountable disgust to a study which, of all others, was at first the most pleasing and delightful. I recollect that having begun to translate Cicero's Orations before I was well acquainted with the first elementary books of the Latin language, from a premature desire of being early acquainted with the prince of Latin orators, the difficulties which

I had to encounter in labouring to comprehend his long and majestic periods, often rendered still more difficult by an involution of clauses and of arguments, were so many and so great, and my determination, at the same time, not to desist till I became acquainted with the illustrious Roman, was so fixed and immovable, that for some years after I could not endure to look into Cicero's Orations, or even to open it accidentally, without turning from it with an unaccountable sensation of disgust. I can, however, read Cicero at present with as much pleasure as I anticipated at first. That unaccountable aversion which I had long felt subsiding by degrees, and by totally neglecting to look at the author for some years, I can now recollect the sensation without feeling its influence. I am therefore inclined to think, that all studies are less agreeable, less a source of delight immediately after they are attained, than if resumed after a lapse of a few years; a proof that the cultivation of taste, while it extends our knowledge, only weakens the pleasure which it originally imparts. Hence it is, that the emotion of pleasure, or, as it is called, the emotion of taste, so seldom accompanies that perception of beauty, in which taste properly consists, though it is this pleasure that originally induces us to cultivate, and enables us to acquire, that perception of beauty which constitutes taste.