STUDY X. 305 



you will add inexprefllbly to the grace of this 

 beautiful tree. This, likewife. Nature, who 

 knows much more of the matter than we, has 

 taken care to do, by fufpending, at the balls of 

 it's divergent boughs, fometimes the oval date, 

 and fometimes the rounded cocoa-nut. 



In general, as often as you employ the circular 

 form, you will greatly enhance the agreeablenefs 

 ■of it, by uniting it with the two contraries of 

 which it is compofed j for, you will then have a 

 complete elementary progreflion. The circular 

 form alone, prefents but one expreflion, the mofl: 

 beautiful of all, in truth ; but united to it's two 

 extremes, it forms, if I may fo exprefs myfelf, an 

 entire thought. It is from the effeâ: which thence 

 refults, that the vulgar confider the form of the 

 heart to be fo beautiful, as to compare to it every 

 other beautiful and interefting objeét. That is beau- 

 tiful as a heart, fay they *. This heart-form con- 

 fifls, at it's balis, of a projeding angle, and above, 

 of a retreating angle ; there we have the extremes : 



* Is not our Author here indulging fancy, rather than fol- 

 lowing Nature ? If this be an idea and expreflion of the com- 

 mon people, it muft be the commonalty of a particular country. 

 Heart is, perhaps, univerfally ufed to exprefs fondnefs, affeélion, 

 délire ; but to reprefent xheform of that organ as beautiful, nay, 

 yhtijlJence of beauty is, furely, a violent ftretch of imagination. 



H.H. 



VOL. II. X and 



