through the medium of the Arts, depends greatly on cultivation, and on the leisure which supposes that first wants are satisfied; but there exists no state of society, however rude, in which the love of decoration and the sense of grandeur have not been recognised, and in which some attempts at corresponding realisations are not to be met with: the difference between such efforts and the most refined productions is a difference only in degree; the existence of the tendencies to which they owe their origin might be always taken for granted, and it would only remain to regulate their influence and direct their capabilities aright.

The Arts derive their chief interest from their twofold relation. They represent the impression of nature on human sympathies; her chosen attributes reflected through a human medium. Thus, while nations, like individuals, present ever-varying characteristics, art, as it expands into life, partakes of their diversities, and may be compared to the bloom of a plant, true to its peculiar developing causes, and originally modified by the soil from which it springs. In barbarous or degenerate nations the sense of the beautiful has ever been manifested only in the lowest degree, while a false excitement, founded on the suppression of the feelings of nature, may be said to have usurped the place of the sublime. We may smile at the simple attempt of the savage to excite admiration by the gaudiness of his attire; but we should shudder to

contemplate the scenes which his fortitude or obduracy can invest with the seeming attributes of sublimity. We mark the decline of taste among the luxurious Romans during the period when the exhibitions of the blood-stained amphitheatre formed their chief amusement. The just value of life, the characteristic of that civilisation which reduces the defensive passions to their due limits, tends to elevate the sources of gratification by pointing out the pleasures of the mind as distinguished from those of sense; and the perception of the beautiful is in its turn the cause, as it is in some degree the result, of the rational enjoyment of life.

The tendency of the Arts, when rightly exercised, to purify enjoyment, to humanise and regulate the affections, constitutes their noblest use, and indicates the connection between the higher objects of taste and moral influences; but it will at once be seen that this idea of usefulness is distinct from the ordinary meaning of the term as applicable to the productions of human ingenuity. A positive use results, indeed, indirectly, from the cultivation of the formative arts, in proportion as their highest powers are developed for it will be found that at all times when accuracy of design has been familiar, and particularly when the human figure has been duly studied, the taste thus acquired from the source of the beautiful has gradually influenced various kinds of manufactures. Again, as illustrat

ing science, the Fine Arts may be directly useful in the stricter sense; but this is not the application which best displays their nature and value. The essence of the Fine Arts begins where utility in its narrower acceptation ends. The abstract character of ornament is to be useless. That this principle exists in nature we immediately feel, in calling to mind the merely beautiful appearances of the visible world, and particularly the colours of flowers. In every case in nature where fitness or utility can be traced, the characteristic quality or relative beauty of the object is found to be identified with that fitness ;-a union imitated as far as possible in the less decorative parts of architecture, furniture, &c.; but where no utility is found to exist, save that of conveying rational delight and of exalting the mind by ideas of perfection, we recognise a more essential or absolute principle of beauty. The Fine Arts may be said to owe their existence to the human recognition of this principle. The question of their utility therefore resolves itself into the inquiry as to the intention of the beauties of nature. The agreeable facts of the external world have not only the general effect of adding a charm to existence, but they appeal to susceptibilities which are peculiarly human; and, in order to estimate them justly, it becomes necessary to separate the instinctive feelings which we possess in common with the rest of the animate creation, from that undefinable union of sensibility and reflection which

calculated to with higher

constitutes taste,-a principle, in a great measure, independent of the passions, yet connect the attractions of sense impulses, by means of admiration. It is this last feeling which the Arts, in their essential character, aspire to kindle, which not only elevates the beautiful, but reduces ideas of fear and danger to the lofty sentiment of the sublime, and teaches the relation of both to a still purer influence; a relation which it is the great privilege of Art, as the interpreter at once of nature and of thought, to embody.

refer all the Fine Arts

It has been customary to to a principle of imitation in one sense this can hardly be objected to, since all owe their satisfactory impression to a certain conformity to nature, and employ nature's principles of congruity and adaptation even where no direct reproduction of reality is apparent. But in a more literal sense, painting, sculpture, and the drama are the only imitative arts; poetry, music, and architecture, the creative arts: the distinction is easily applicable to the varieties of each class. It is scarcely necessary to add, that the Fine Arts are addressed to the two nobler senses only, and that the elements of beauty can be arrested by those arts alone which appeal to the sense of vision.

With regard to the classification of the Arts, according to their relative excellence, those are generally considered the most worthy in which

the mental labour employed and the mental pleasure produced are greatest, and in which the manual labour, or labour of whatever kind, is least apparent. This test would justly place poetry first; but the criterion should not be incautiously applied; for in architecture, where human ingenuity is most apparent, and even where the design is very simple, a powerful impression on the imagination may be excited from magnitude, proportion, or other causes. In such cases, however, it will be found that we lose sight of the laborious means in the absorbing impression of the effect, and the art thus regains its dignity. It would be an invidious as well as a very difficult task to assign the precise order of the various arts according to the above principle; but it may be remarked, that their union is a hazardous experiment, inasmuch as, from their different modes and materials, they depart in different degrees from nature. The incongruity here alluded to, is sometimes observable in attempts to combine the principles of sculpture and painting. The drama itself, which unites poetry with many characteristics of the formative arts, and with music, is in constant danger of violating the first principles of style, viz., the consistency of its conventions; and in the more intimate union, satisfactory as it often is, of poetry and music, the latter, though the inferior art, is too independent and too attractive to be a mere vehicle, and is commonly allowed to usurp