11 



other. Purple is pleasing by tempering the intensity of the 

 red, and enlivening the languor ot the deep violet. 



20. Varieli/ is [''"asinii- by supporting attention, which is 

 apt to droop when a single object is long contemplated ; 

 hence the pleasure of shews. 



Visible objects appear either in motion or at rest ; the re- 

 sults of their motion form events. 



21. Proportion, which is the ratio of similitude discerned 

 betwixt different visible objects, is indeed introduced by vi- 

 sion of the objects which present it, but is not itself a visual, 

 but rather an intellectual object.* 



' 22. Beauty, in its strict literal sense, is a denomination 

 solely applicable to objects that affcrd pleasure to the sight, 

 independantly of any relation to any thing else— such objects 

 are light and colours. In the most ancient and venerable 

 book now existing, we find this term first applied to the fruit 

 of the fatal tree, its colour being said to be beautiful. But 

 in a somewhat more enlarged sense it is applicable to such forms 

 as most powerfully suggest instinctive sympathetic affections, 

 emotions and sentiments. Such forms constitute sexual beauty, 

 which therefore consists in such expression in the frame of 

 each sex as has the strongest tendency to inspire those feel- 



c 2 ings 



* What was the original colour of man, whether hlack or white, has been attempted 

 to be rendered doubtful ; but that it was the white seems to me to be satisfactorily in- 

 ferred from this, that warm climates, even at this day, produce in the whites an approx- 

 imation to blackness, but no change of climate produces in the blacks an approximation 

 to whiteness. « 



