FRAGMENTS ON THE BEAUTIFUL. 243 



For, if my soul should close her eyes 

 To dream her dream of extacies. 



In the spiritual land 

 Where the unfleshed sleepers go. 

 How dare ye to call this death ! 

 'Tis but to exhale the breath, 

 •And, upon its wings, to fly 



With the fire-helmed angel band 

 Up into infinity. 

 Wrapt into divinity ! 



A. R. A. 



FRAGMENTS ON THE BEAUTIFUL. 



That the emotion of the beautiful is eminently an intellectual one is 

 shown by the fact that the only senses at all connected with its impres- 

 sions are those confessedly pertaining to the higher faculties of the soul. 

 Hearing and seeing are pre-eminently the intellectual senses, and to their 

 ofBce by universal consent the application of the term beautiful is con- 

 fined. We speak of a beautiful sight, but not of a beautiful taste, of a 

 beautiful sound, but not of a beautiful feeling. 



The inferior senses, which man has no power of using in a more 

 exalted manner than the brutes Avith whom he shares them — these are 

 incapable of becoming the medium of the beautiful. The two senses 

 which are the avenue to his rational, his disinterested nature, these en- 

 gross the entire use of the mind, by so universal a consent, as to enable 

 us to appeal to this fact as strong confirmation from the law of nature. 

 How much, too, of the beautiful, most vivid in its cnaracter, is purely 

 ideal. The superstitions, the legends, the tales of fairy-land, the song 

 of the bard, the dream of the romancer, these dwell in the mind's tem- 

 ple, invisible deities, but not the less powerful, because the hand is un- 

 seen that executes their will. And the same mind fluctuates in different 

 mcods in its conception of beauty. " What can be more beautiful than 

 a grape," says Cicero, in a burst of enthusiasm, and possibly when 

 somewhat stimulated by the juice of the fruit he praises. But in a hap- 

 pier and higher mood he exclaims — "•Who does not admire the splendor 

 and beauty of virtue ! Nothing is more lovely than virtue, nothing more 

 beautiful." Just as the natural tendencies of disposition float backward 

 and onward, do the emotions of the beautiful fluctuate. When it is in 

 our nature it will find its way through all that bears it down. Where it 

 it is not, enchanting sights, or charming sounds can never awake it. — 

 With it we may glow with a divine enthusiasm on earth, without it we 

 should be unmoved on the verge of heaven. Like the angel of Milton, 



