heighten its fitness there is gain on with metrical language and with both sides. So Sculpture, as distinct dance. The constant use that is from its subservience to Architecture, has a natural use in human life, as it serves to perpetuate to a people the likeness of those men to whom, from any motives of national homage, they desire to yield this testimony of perpetual remembrance. It has served, moreover, the purposes of their erring worship, by shaping for them the objects of their idolatry. These two purposes gave to primitive Sculpture its place of ordinary service to human life, without any intermixture of those higher principles which have since found their way into the art. But imagination saw how in the rude forms of primitive art she could invest her own conceptions of august and beautiful form, and taking the chisel from the hand of mechanic labour, she began, for the world's delight, the work of her beautiful creation. Painting seems to have had a similar origin with Sculpture. It was at first an art of memory, not of imagination. It was used to preserve the likenesses of men, and from its ready variety the records of events. In the hands of imagination it became a beautiful art for delight; sometimes still serving its original use, and sometimes seeking no other end than pure delight. This art, too, was applied in a natural use, as it may be called, to the service of erring religion. There is a farther use which may be mentioned as found in these three arts in their early practice, that is, as preparing the mansions of the dead. All these works, whether of utility or homage, are works of natural service, independent altogether of that imagination which is proper to the Fine Arts, though they may all be said alike to invite that imagination. In like manner, Poetry had its primitive natural service; metrical language being found a fit vehicle for the memory of nations; and being used, therefore, for the oral record of laws, moral doctrines, mythology, and national events -at first independently of imagination. It is said that the science of the Druids was taught in many thousand verses. The fitness of metrical language for recitation with song, made it also suitable for religious and other ceremonies, which was also a natural primitive use. A few words may be added of Melody, as connected both found among early and rude nations in every part of the world, of some species of melody framed with words" into song, or accompanying their rude dances-in services of their worshipin their festivities-in other stated and regular occasions of life-as we find, for example-among the early Greeks, among the Highlanders of Scotland, among the Arabs-customary songs accompanying particular avocations of labor-this various uniform use of melody for service without imagination justifies our considering it, like the other arts, as having a foundation in natural life, on which the work of imagination is afterwards raised. And if Music might seem to imply an ar tificial melody, as if it must have had from the beginning gratuitous invention, the singular fact may be recollected that the primary notes of the music of all nations are the same-a sufficient proof that the ground of melody is laid in our organic constitution, and a reason the more to support the view which has been taken of this art as having a natural origin in the natural occasions of life, independently of imagination-since even melodies of joy and sorrow may thus be allowed as the natural utterance of a being, whose ear and voice are framed with the instinct of melody. Without pursuing similar illustration through less important branches of art, and without pretending to have given more than a very slight statement with respect to those that have been enumerated, the argument which these observations were intended to support, will, perhaps, be admitted, namely, that those Arts, which we term the Fine Arts, have all their proper origin in the uses of human life, independently of that infused spirit of imagination which constitutes their interest to us, and which, in our estimation, is indispensable to their character. Nor is this consideration of so little importance, as we might be apt to imagine, in determining the ultimate character of these arts. For although many of the uses which have been indicated have no longer much weight for our minds, yet among those early nations to whom they served these purposes, they were felt as of great moment. It is difficult for us to quit in imagination our own condition of society, and to enter into the conception of those whose state of life and feelings is very different. If we could justly estimate the place which these arts have in the manners of nations in the primitive conditions of life, we should understand that they have a great, even a national importance. For these arts which afterwards adorn life are at that time inwoven with its serious necessities and are intermingled, too, in concerns, which, if not of necessity, are held by them of most solemn importance. They make part of what may be called the structure of their life. FORM. Sir Joshua lays down that Sculpture aims at two things-Form and Character-and that to accomplish either of these, is to achieve a mighty work. But how there should be intellectual delight or sublimity in Form he does not unfold; yet he who knows not this, is imperfectly skilled in the Grecian soul. Let us, therefore, discover why Intellect enjoys a statue which has no expression as far as the subject is concerned, but animal action and animal perfection. Some elements of pleasure are obvious, but go only a mall way. First, there is the original pleasure of loooking at animal beauty, which is not inconsiderable to those who have been bred up in that perpetual flow of animal enjoyment with which Grecians were blest; for the beauty of an animal is its adaptation to animal enjoyment. Then, we suppose, where this beauty is carried hrough every part, so that nothing of the defects appear, which, in the infinite chances of matter, settle upon all things of mortal birth, it is impossible to resist a feeling as if there were an exemption for that creature from the ordinary laws to which all others are enthralled-as if it were a favoured being, a darling of heaven that no power of annoyance can come near, and which the fighting elements of nature have united to spare. A Flower of faultless and glorious beauty, just unfolded, seems as if it could not live on this earth and under these skies, if there were not some feeling above for its loveliness to save it from harm. And this Ariosto must have known, when, in describing the rose which the virgin resembles, he says that sun, and air, and the dewy morning, and sky, and earth, incline towards it in favour.This is a feeling of protection. The feeling of the care in Nature for her production, goes much further-beides applying to forms of faultless strength, where the idea of especial protection cannot apply- though, indeed, a superior idea takes its place-that of a creature above pro-tection-born to triumph over the ills under which ordinary mortality dies. It must be these feelings that make faultless forms of beauty or strength, independently of all expression, poetical, and worthy of imagination's love. Of course it is not necessary that at every good statue the mind should run out into these speculations; but if it has ever been in the habit of indulging and believing in them, the least, almost unperceived, inclination to them, will be sufficient to exalt Form; indeed that must be true throughout all poetry and feeling. What is superstition with regard to flowers, is literal matter of fact for gods and god-begotten heroes. Among the obvious causes of pleasure in mere Form of a perfect statue, are the knowledge and skill of the sculptor; but we know not how far this may go for nobler pleasure. The mere mechanical skill of doing a difficult thing by long practice does not appear very exalted; and how much share it may be allowed in the pleasure of a cultivated mind we cannot tell. In a rude mind it seems often to make up the whole-and that very strong-as in the admiration of rope-dancingbut even here we can hardly believe that the naked perception of a difficulty overcome by long practice, is the sole source of delight. We believe that in the pleasure of the "men of the multitude" there is something more poetical; a confusion of astonishment at the exertion of powers of which they had no conception; and a feeling as if those powers came from a higher quarter, and the rope-dancer were a gifted being:-a portion of the reverence which the most enlightened minds feel for a juggler. Skill in the arts may be very delightful to an enlightened mind, not for itself, but what it is combined with. When very difficult dancing, for example, is very grace. ful and expressive, there must be great joy in perceiving that the long and painful labour by which the difficulty has been overcome has not killed the soul of dancing in the dancer, but that her delight in grace and natural feeling has carried her triumphantly through her severe discipline, and so entirely subjected her art to her nature, that there is no trace in her motions of the effort by which they were acquired but they might seem to be inspirations. Something of the same sort is the pleasure which perfect skill gives, when unostentatiously used, as indicating greatness of mind. Skill merely can only be delightful by that illusion, of its seeming in its perfection to be really an endowment of power from nature. But the fact is, it is no illusion-but a truth. Where skill is of a masterly kind, it proceeds from great powers given by nature, and only consummated by art-and therefore let it no more be said, when Michael Angelo paints in the size of a hat a corse that seems six feet long, that it is merely a trick of painting. It may be a sport of painting, but full surely there is power there. On the whole, may it be received, that skill, though offensive, when other things are sacrificed to it, is in itself admirable--and when in subjection to passion, extremely admirable?—The knowledge of perfect form is a fit subject of much admiration—because it implies a long course of noble studies-which studies derive their nobility from the nobleness of Form itself-which brings us to the great question, what is the real value of beauty: to what degree is it lawful that beautiful flesh should have power over the eyes of spirit and intellect? CORRECTION OF HUME'S DOCTRINE OF ASSOCIATION. Mr. Hume, enumerating the chief course of the operation of moral powheads of Relation, considers the rela- ers, and the connected sequence of tion of cause and effect as that which phenomena, of which he had served connects together the successive events as the instrumental cause. But there and actions of a man's life, or of a is no man whose mind is so severed nation's history. We can see but one from all its natural tendencies that he principle of Unity to the events, acts, can look upon any individual of his changes, incidents of a man's life, and species in this manner. Let any one that is himself; but one principle of ask himself by what tie it is that the Unity, to the same things in a nation's events, incidents, and acts of the life history, and that is our conception of of another are connected in his own the nation as a collective whole. It mind. He will quickly be aware that is true that the relation of causation there is a very different principle of mixes much in the series that is thus their union. There is not a stronger united. The man's character causes principle governing our thoughts than his actions, his actions affect his char- this which makes individual man himacter, and thus influence again indi- self the conspicuous object of our rerectly his further actions. Besides, gard, and makes that which belongs to the events of his life have in them- him or befalls him important in our selves a succession of their own. One eyes, because it does belong to or has brings on another, in an endless chain befallen him. Take away the man, of causation from the beginning to the and leave merely the connected series end of his life. This is indisputable. of events, and we trow they would It shows, what may be often remarked not long remain together in our knowelsewhere, that the same series of ledge; but replace the man, whom objects may be united together to the we have loved or whom we merely mind under different views of connex- familiarly know, and what throngs of ion. If we could look on individual incidents, what innumerable recollecman merely as a subject of philosophi- tions, which have no other interest, no cal speculation, we might see in him other tie in our mind, at once gather only the subject round which a series about him, and invest him' to our ima of causes and effects were wound, and gination with his own history! The forget himself in investigating the chain of causation subsists indeed to a wonderful extent, but we are not the observers that are able to trace it. The greater part of mankind knit their thoughts of their fellows together by no such connexions. A principle so abstract can extend through no long series of their thoughts. But give them the man himself to remember his life by, and you enchain indissolubly the train of its events from the cradle to the present hour. Even to those of highest and most cultivated mind, there is not much difference in this respect. The strong bond of human nature is upon them all; and if philosophy had never undertaken to explain on what ground we associate together the recollections that concern a brother or a friend, we could never have been much at a loss to discover it for ourselves. We just now observed, that this series of causes and effects which is in fact so deeply involved in the history of every human being, is in part discernible by us, and mixes in that union of our thoughts which is collected upon the individual. Need we intimate how much our strong affections concur to establish these associations? The incidents that would soon be forgotten of another are long remembered of those in whom every little occurrence has part in the interest of our hearts. What we have now said of individuals we should have to repeat of nations. There is a mighty series of events strongly bound together that flows down the history of every people, a great series of causes and effects. The knowledge of these is the Understanding of the Philosophy of History; but we are warranted in asserting that this philosophical understanding, and this pha.csophical interest, are not the ground on which the events that compose the history of a people are collected in our Imagination. We love and admire the high characters of those who are illustrious in their country's annals; and we gather round them the events in which they participated. We love the nation itself; and we remember its calamities and triumphs, its virtues, and the stain of its virtues, by the exultation and pain which we felt when first our imagination was kindled with their lofty story, or their decline and fall. If we ask, then, what is the great bond of connexion to our mind among all the events of the life of any indi vidual, it is evidently this, that they all regard one object; it is in the man himself that they are all united, and he is the bond of their connexion to our imagination. Thus when we think of the great series of great actions which constitutes the history of Julius Cæsar their order in time is not the chief bond of their association. But they are all associated round the image of that matchless warrior and statesinan; and we think at once, in one wide complex emotion, of all his being, from the hour he first appears before us, a restless candidate for the lower office of the state, till, in the fulness of his power, the brightness of his glory, and the darkness of his guilt, he breathes out his mighty spirit at the base of Pompey's statue. This personal reference is as evidently the tie that likewise binds together all the events of the man's own life in whose memory they are connected: And thus for himself, and for the life of every human being in whose fate or fortune he is in any way interested, this personal reference which alone gave unity to the events as they befell, gives them their proper unity to memory. gives them their proper historical bond of unity. It How much of all the history of mankind is already exhausted under this class of associations will be apparent to every one who remembers how small that portion of history is which is independent of the names of distinguished individual actors. But the same principle extended will at once comprehend all history. Recollect the history of any nation, and consider what is the real bond of association to your own mind among the events which regard it. There can be no doubt as to the answer. It is this simply, that they do regard it. Athens and Sparta gave unity to the events of their own history, as every man is himself the point of union to those of his life. Each nation is to our conception an individual, undergoing through the period of its lengthened life the succession of events, or achieving the succession of actions, which make up the history of a life perhaps of centuries. And each people, while their race and name remain, whatever fortunes and revolutions they may pass through, serves still in the view of our mind to collect together all the events and achieve ments that have been involved with their race and name. The city, the race, the nation, the community of nations, whatever the collective whole may be, of which the acts and fortunes are the subjects of our thought, that whole gives its own unity to its own history, and serves as much as the individual for the bond of connexion which unites those events to the understandings and the memories of men. THE APATHY OF THE STOICS. The two sections opposed to each other in antiquity, were those of the Epicureans and the Stoics. They were opposed, indeed, not merely by the language of their tenets, one sect maintaining that Pleasure is the greatest good, the other that Pain is no Evil; but by the spirit of their philosophy. The Epicureans sought tranquillity of enjoyment. The Stoics desired an arduous Virtue. The Epicureans narrowed and degraded to the utmost the good they proposed, when they made man himself the End of his Virtue. The Stoics exalted that good to the utmost, when they endeavoured to make man himself nothing in his own regard, and required of him a conformity to that absolute law of Virtue, of which his happiness would be a necessary result indeed, but was not to be the object of his desire. its essential elements; and the morality which is to be suited for man to embrace, must temper, restrain, and govern passion, but must not reject it from the system of his Being. It appears, then, that the principle which they adopted as their great maxim of wisdom-to foliow, or conform to nature--was in one important respect departed from by them, through imperfect understanding of that nature to which they purposed to conform. They had begun, no doubt, in framing their system, by adopting as its primary and leading principle, the Supremacy of Intellectual Reason, and the necessity of the entire conquest of the inferior mind by that power. This conception of sovereignty in the calm intellectual mind, and absolute subjection of the inferior soul, led necessarily to a false view of the actual If we ask what was the defect of the constitution of human nature;-it led Stoical System, it was manifestly this, to regarding the Passions not as imthat it was inapplicable to human portant and vital elements of the whole nature. In saying which, we do not being, but as disorders of the mind, mean merely to allege that that high- from which it must by all means be est perfection at which they aimed was freed. This consequence necessarily by man unattainable, which would be followed, because the rising up of no objection, since the continual ap- every passion is attended, while it proaches to the highest state proposed lasts, with a disturbance of the soul in are all that are requisite under any which reason is confused and susimaginable system. But we mean that pended, whence they gave them no the spirit of their philosophy does not higher name than Perturbations. They accord with the general spirit of hu- did not perceive how imperfect, and man nature. Those who could be its iusufficient to the distinction of our followers are but a few out of the being is reason alone; that these whole number of mankind-those troubling and impetuous movements only of high intellectual capacity, and of the soul,-joy, sorrow, desire, anger, of great native energy of character. fear,-are the very declarations of our They profess, indeed, to lay Virtue open nature as to its own good and evil; to all mankind, and call on all to apply that they are the teachers of reason, themselves to its pursuit. But to the which, without them, is uninstructed greater number of those to whom it is as to human good. The vehement offered, their method of Virtue is im- and impetuous fear in the soul of a practicable. That exclusion of Pas- parent in the sudden danger of a sion which they require, and which child-the flame of indignant hate they express by Apathy, meaning, which passes over the heart at the however, not insensibility, but freedom hearing or witnessing some atrocious from the perturbation of passion- crime the sleepless passion which that exclusion is in fact the exclusion seizes the spirit of a young patriot of Human Nature. Passion is one of warrior when the foot of a foe is |