AUGUST. 



363 



served, we associate him with the old patriarchs in their 

 journeys to new lands ; and we have often seen him forming 

 an important figure in old paintings and engravings. It is 

 not his shaggy coat and uncouth appearance that yield him 

 his picturesque character, so much as the interesting scenes 

 and adventures with which his figure is associated. 



The same remarks may be applied with equal propriety to 

 the goat. He is the animal of mountain scenery, and the 

 sight of him suggests a variety of romantic incidents, con- 

 nected with such landscape. He is often represented as 

 standing on precipitous heights, and browsing upon dangerous 

 declivities. He is in fact one of the dumb heroes of danger- 

 ous adventure. With the inhabitants of mountainous coun- 

 tries, as among the Alps and the Highlands of Scotland, the 

 goat is the domesticated animal that supplies them with milk. 

 The hardiness and activity of the goat, his frequent introduc- 

 tion into pictures of Alpine scenery, and his habit of finding 

 sustenance in wild regions and fastnesses where no other ani- 

 mal could live, combine to render his image strongly suggest- 

 ive of rusticity and the simple habits of mountaineers. 



It is common to regard the uncouthness of the appearance 

 of these animals as the quality from which they derive their 

 picturesque expression. It is much more probable that, on 

 account of the absence of beauty of color, smoothness and 

 symmetry, the imagination is left more entirely to the influ-' 

 ence of the poetic and traditional images connected with 

 these animals. In this way it may often be explained why 

 rudeness is, to a certain extent, a negative picturesque quality, 

 because it leaves the imagination entirely to the suggestions 

 of the scene ; whereas, if it were very beautiful, the sight 

 would be more agreeably occupied in surveying its intrinsic 

 beauties than in dwelling upon its more poetical relations to 

 certain other ideas and objects. 



Why is the horse not a picturesque animal, it may be 

 asked, but on account of the sleekness of his appearance ? I 

 am persuaded that his sleekness stands in the way of this ex- 

 pression, for the reason that it causes him to be associated 

 with fashion and the pomp and pride of wealth. Hence, it 



