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"And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves,
Dewy with Nature's tear-drops, as they pass,
Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves,
Over the unreturning brave. Alas!

Ere evening to be trodden like the grass,

While now beneath them; but above shall grow

In its next verdure, when this fiery mass

Of living valour, rolling on the foe,

And burning with high hope, shall moulder cold and low."

These verses, so much admired and so popular, are a good example of emotions which are the means of recognizing that community of elementary nature, which exists in multitudes. Passing beyond the interests of individuals, these emotions extend into the knowledge of something absolute and unlimited, which is called "Nature," but which is not high or low in relation to sentiment, but only general. And literary works which make use of such means for affecting the mind, may be referred to the Second Stage of taste. The works of many of the German writers are referable to this class; and it is probable that in Europe they have been of much use, in preparing the way for other things, by accustoming literature more to the expression of feelings, which resolve themselves into the unlimited and unpersonal-although it were no more than common nature, melting into watery and tearful sentiment, or in those works which are meant to produce terror, the gorgons of vague and floating darkness, losing themselves in shadowy obscurity. The greatest depths of natural feeling are often accompanied with a sense of transitoriness and delusion, in which particular being appears lost and solved in an indefinite universality, like the Maya of the Indians. Sir William Jones gives a translation of one of their poems, in which the Gymnosophist expresses the desire to be weaned from the uncertainties of a transitory existence, and to fix his thoughts on the permanent and real. The poem is entitled the "Mallet of Delusion," and has among others the following stanzas:—

"As a drop of water moves tremulous on the lotos-leaf, thus is human life inexpressibly slippery; the company of the virtuous is here but for a moment; that is our ship in passing the ocean of the world.

Day and night, evening and morning, winter and spring, depart and re

turn; time sports, life passes on, yet the wind of expectation continues unrestrained.

"To dwell under the mansion of the high Gods, at the foot of a tree; to have the ground for a couch, and a hide for vesture; to renounce all extrinsic enjoyments-whom doth not such devotion fill with delight?

"Place not thy affections too strongly on foe or friend-on a son or a kins-, man, in war or in peace. Be thou even-minded towards all, if thou desirest speedily to attain to the nature of Vishnu.

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'Eight original mountains and seven seas, Brahme, Indra, the Sun, and Rudra,-not thou, not I, not this or that people; wherefore, then, should anxiety be raised in our minds?

"In thee, in me, in every other being, is Vishnu; foolishly art thou of fended with me, not bearing my approach; see every soul in thy own soul; in all places lay aside a notion of diversity.'

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Such is the pathetic address of the Gymnosophist, endeavouring to fix his attention on the eight original mountains and seven seas. This deep natural sense of transitoriness and uncertainty, is capable of being_turned either to sadness or levity. In modern times, it has sometimes taken the form of an inclination for scepticism in reasoning and matters of opinion; for when scepticism is perfect and absolute, it is like a resolution of all particular thoughts into the indefinite. But also, the same deep feeling of uncertainty has sometimes been shewn in the vague horrors of a German romance, where the principal events take place in a mysterious twilight, or while autumnal showers are driven by the wind through the recesses of some unexplored forest. In such productions, change, doubt, and indefinite sadness, are always the chief elements, and they belong to the second stage of feeling.

I shall now proceed to speak of the

Third Stage of feeling. To it may be referred the mixture of human passions and affections with the sentiment of the beautiful, and with the knowledge of the permanent and abstract idea. From this mixture arises internal taste, and discrimination as to the higher and lower grades of feeling. But still the mixture implies the presence of human affections, which are more or less changed, for example, in the sentiment, justice, or generosity, or repentance, or the love of the beautiful. To this intermediate region belong the finest struggles of sentiment in tragedies or fictitious narrative; since, from the mixture of the different elements, it is both interesting to the passions of the reader, and gratifying to his taste, or his internal discrimination as to the quality of feeling, which he must exercise in sympathizing with the transition of struggling affections from their natural anarchy, into abstract beauty. This, therefore, is the Third Stage, and retains somewhat of the elements of the two inferior. But it is unnecessary to say any thing farther, to render the difference between them perceptible.

I think the exercise of Imagination belongs most properly to the Third Stage of feeling. Imagination is not merely a power for conceiving new situations to interest the passions; for, in all the bolder and more sudden flights of imagination, there is a temporary feeling of the reality of general ideas, as existing abstractedly from particular objects. These glimpses are only for a moment, but they are divine. It is this which connects imagination with elevation of sentiment. Relatively to this Voltaire was a remarkable instance. In him, imagination appeared as a power not always recognizing the beautiful, but exerting activity, to find astonishing contrasts to visible realities. He was like a strong and far-travelled bird appearing on the earth, from some distant region; and the astonishment which he excited, was itself a satire on the narrow conceptions of mankind. His flights were rather those of strength and activity, than of rising qualities of

taste.

But almost any rapid exercise of imagination is connected with the feeling of the abstract. The rapid comparison of possible forms can seldom fail to produce some astonishment, and some risings of taste, beyond the narrow sphere of selfish pas

sion, and also beyond that of natural affections. Therefore, I have no hesitation in saying, that imagination (which is a means of invention in all the stages of taste) belongs most properly, in point of feeling, to the Third Stage, which is the mixture of human affections with the sentiment of the beautiful. In all cases, imagination is an active recognition of the varieties of possible form. In its finest exercises, a profound sentiment of the beautiful makes these appear tinged with qualified hues, having almost the languor of passive affection. Activity, however, is most appropriate to imagination. These expressions may appear vague and mystical, but it can scarcely be otherwise in treating of such a subject.

That which characterizes the Third Stage of taste, therefore, is not the absence of human affections, but the internal discrimination of the qualities of feeling in relation to the abstract beautiful. Since satire discriminates as to quality, it must belong to this stage. It sometimes appears to make one half of human nature ironically sympathize with what is bad, while the other half is made to condemn, and to feel opposition of taste, and so to discriminate. But satire, without the exercise of taste, is mere buffoonery, or abuse.

The Fourth and last Stage of feeling is to be found in the fine arts, and in the contemplation of abstract relations, such as they are in themselves, without reference to human affections. This kind of feeling applies to form, style, possible order, relative colour, harmony, extension, and the like. These things cannot be so well expressed by literature, which gives only words to suggest conceptions to the reader, who may conceive imperfectly; but the fine arts exemplify abstract relations, and make them cognizable to the senses. The two first or inferior stages of taste have no relation to abstract form, but the third is not below the level of the fine arts, for it is the mixture of human affections with the sentiment of the beautiful. In music, it is well expressed by the nixture of the discords, and imperfect concords, of human affections, with harmony. In painting, it may be shewn in the expressions of the countenances, and in the various mixtures of light with darkness. The Third and Fourth Stages of Taste are closely al

that it may often require to consider lied; and the difference between them, is the absence of human passions and affections in the last.

Having thus gone through the different stages of taste, and established the grade of each, upon principles which must appear clear and undeniable to every person capable of reflect ing upon the subject, I appeal to you, Mr North, whether I have not stated things well worthy of consideration, in an age when there are so many different excitements to bewilder the mind,

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THE DEVIL AMONG THE ARTISTS; OR, DAVID DREADNOUGHT AGAINST ROUND-ROBIN.

WHEN an earthquake occurs in Calabria, Sicily, Portugal, or any part of the habitable globe, excelling in convulsions and eruptions of nature, it leaves behind it such decided and unequivocal proofs of its reality, as to silence the cavils of the most sceptical. Towers, temples, palaces, and houses, streets, squares, and cities, go down like a child's card-play-thing, and perhaps some twenty or forty thousand human creatures are burned or buried. But when an earthquake occurs in Scotland, say at Inverness or Comrie, it is so faint and woe-begone, that its existence seems extremely problematical. Hence there arise two parties, the earth-quakers and the antiearth-quakers. The one pull a long face, speak in hollow murmurs, take you solemnly by the fourth button of your waistcoat, cast their eyes up to the ceiling, and stun your soul with the dreadful narrative. Shock after shock, they maintain, to the number mayhap of the devil's dozen, struck old mother earth till she trembled as with cholic; the heavens were as black, they asseverate, as the crown of their hat; the heat was like an oven, and the whole concern most frightful indeed, and dismal alike to men, women, children, and cattle.

In corroboration of such terrific doings of nature, and to shew that the solid earth must have quoke from its foundation, up comes the cook from the kitchen, solemnly swearing by her sole and flounder, that the very spit shook, and every pan clattered. The butler is ready to take his Bible-oath, that he heard bottles breaking in the binns;

*

and the pretty house-maid appears with a broken china-cup in her rosy paw, as demonstrative evidence of some mighty convulsion of nature. Dogs had been heard to bark, cattle to low, and children to squall. The very hens had tuck-tuck-tuck-a- tuck-tuckooed in the poultry-yard, in a manner which no hen would have adopted, except during an earthquake; and the dairy-maid having accidentally gone with Roger, the ploughman, into the barn during the darkness, had felt the very straw shaking, and observed that the eggs trundled away, most alarmingly indeed, out of their nests, bearing witness that the barley-mow was agitated to its foundation-sheaf. The anti-earthquakers, on the other hand, are willing to pledge faith, fortune, life itself, that there has been nothing whatever of the kind. If the bottles have shook upon the table, it was, according to them, after dinner; and the effect was produced by no earthquake, but by a rap of the knuckles, enforcing some jocular, political, or amatory effusion. If a gentleman fell off his chair, they blame no earthquake, but lay his fall to the charge of the jorum; and if the Turkey carpet heaved, sunk, and whirled, there seems no mystery whatever in such emotions, for they know, drunk as they are, that the earth is as fast as a nail, and that the table is standing a most steady octoped on a most trust-worthy floor. "Damn the earthquake did one or other of us either see, hear, or feel! However, we won't be positive; only we were too pleasantly occupied to attend to such trifles, and really we pity people who are so sensitive and

*Report of the Society of the Cognoscenti for the encouragement of the Fine Arts in Scotland. 8vo. 2s.

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person whatever-man, woman, or child, their liver must be white as

snow.

But we chance to know that it has frightened a considerable number of persons; and on that account, we shall inquire shortly into the cause and rationality of their fears. Fear and Anger are of one family-the children of Folly. And accordingly the persons in question, (some of them, at least,) exhibit at one time faces pale with fright, and at another red with rage, alternating between the physiognomy of a gander and that of a bubbly-jock. The gentlemen to whom we allude are the ARTISTS OF EDINBURGH; and the following is a precis of their proceedings, dictated by their Fear and their Folly.

A few days after the publication of this Report, a few of these Artists, (we never mention names of individuals in this Magazine,) with mealy faces, and ragged hair, and eyes endeavouring in vain to jump out of their sockets, were seen hurrying to and fro, sorely distraught. It was suspected that the gate of some Lunatic Asylum had been incautiously left open, and that some crazy folks had escaped into the city; but this conjecture unfortunately did not prove true. The persons alluded to have not yet been in confinement. They have hitherto been supposed sane; but their friends now begin to shake their heads. Well, then these gentlemen having recovered from the speechless passion inspired by the Report, determined to discover who had let it, and to visit him, or them, we presume, with the full measure of their most formidable and destructive vengeance. They accordingly got some person to write for them a Manifesto, declaring their contempt, scorn, abhorrence, and so forth, of this Report; and with it they marched about in a state of the most pompous trepidation, from the house of one artist to another, demanding that he should instantly put his signature to it-or what?, or be excommunicated from the fellowship of human beings, and be forced thenceforth to associate with Cockneys.

To this manful and maledictory Manifesto, as its issuers no doubt deen

it, we really ar
several distinguis
respectable names.

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W. Thomson, Andrew lan, and John Watson, have ab put down their signatures to this p try and pitiful paper. Where were their wits a wool-gathering at the time? Did they read it, or hear it read? or were they one and all, altogether, or at sundry times and in divers manners, incapable of reading it, or of hearing it read? Devoutly do we trust, that they were all in a state of civilation when they put pen to pa per; for more creditable to any man would it be, to get bowzy once a-day for a year, Sundays, perhaps, excepted, than to have signed this calumnious circular-this railing Round-Robin. Can any thing be more pitiable than to see two or three full-grown men, such as they who carried about this affair for signatures, able to walk, we presume, without any more than mutual assistance, and not altogether unable to articulate, we repeat, could any thing be more pitiable than to see these blockheads blundering about, up one stair and down another, in search of signatures of excommunication against a writer, who exhibits in every line of his Report the utmost candour, goodnature, chearfulness, and philanthropy? O doughty deputation of dunces! Missionaries to convert men from the principles and practice of Christianity! Sneaking-snivellingsmoking subscription-seekers, full of gall and guile! Why, what right have you, answer me that, to prevent any brother brush from brandishing a pen occasionally as well as a pencil? Though neither of you probably can write a single sentence of grammar yourself, is that any reason why David Dreadnought, and Paul Playfair, and Samuel Small-text, and the other members* of the Cognoscenti, should wrap up their talent in a towel, except indeed it should be an oaken one? Where have you been living all your days? Have you been crawling on the surface, or sunk in the bowels of the earth? Have you been imprisoned for thirty years in the dungeons of the Inquisition? Have you been engaged in some mining speculation; and has your hair

The society consists of upwards of forty members, ordinary and extraordinary. Vol. XI.

4 F

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