BEAUTY IN NATUKE. 



BEAUTY is any quality in an object which, through the 

 medium of the sight, affects the mind, the passions, or the 

 senses with immediate pleasure. If we carefully examine 

 the objects that possess this quality, we shall be able to 

 separate them into two classes, one affecting the visual 

 nerves with an organic sense of pleasure, resembling sweet- 

 ness to the palate or fragrance to the smell; the other 

 having a similar power of exciting agreeable sensations 

 of another kind, or some delightful sentiment or affection. 

 The first is true organic beauty; the other, relative or moral 

 beauty. But the latter is so complex that it is difficult 

 in many cases -to determine what the property is that pro- 

 duces it. Color seems to be the principal cause of the 

 organic sensation of beauty ; beautiful forms derive more 

 of their power from the expression of certain ideas asso- 

 ciated with them. Beauty, indeed, is any visible quality 

 in an object that causes a passionate desire to look upon 

 it for the sake of the pleasure it excites. But there is a 

 great deal both in nature and art which is called beautiful 

 that deserves this epithet only as a figure of speech. 



The beauty of landscape in general is purely relative. 

 Nature is for the most part homely in her features ; and 

 to those who possess a dull imagination, many of her 

 scenes, which a man of feeling would describe with rap- 

 ture, are positively ugly. The love of the ornate dis- 

 tinguishes those who possess a great deal of culture with 

 very little imagination, and who seek in what they might 

 call the beauty of landscape some visible quality that 



