16 BEAUTY AND SUBLIMITY. 



tion, the taste may acquire a fastidious refinement unsuitable 

 to the present situation of human nature ; and those intel- 

 lectual and moral habits, which ought to be formed by ac- 

 tual experience of the world, may be gradually so accommo- 

 dated to the dreams of poetry and romance, as to disqualify 

 us for the scenes in which we are destined to act. But a 

 well-regulated imagination is the great spring of human ac- 

 tivity, and tlie principal source of human improvement. As 

 it delights in presenting to the mind scenes and characters 

 more perfect than those with which we are acquainted, it 

 prevents us from ever being completely satisfied with our 

 present condition, or with our past attainments, and engages 

 us continually in the pursuit of some untried enjoyment, or 

 of some ideal excellence. Destroy this faculty, and the con- 

 ditioft of man will become as stationary as that of the brutes. 



Questions. — 1. What is imagination ? 2. By whom are its most 

 sublime exertions made ? 3. Illustrate its operation in the common 

 offices of life. 4. On what do the activity and improvement of ima- 

 gination greatly depend ? 5. What may be the consequence of an 

 excessive indulgence in the pleasures of imagination .'' 6. Why is a 

 well-regulated imagination the great spring of human activity, and 

 source of human improvement ? 



LESSON 9. 



Beauty and Sublimity. 



Emo'tions, vivid feelings arising immediately from the consider- 

 ation of objects, perceived, remembered, or imagined. 



Cartoon', a painting or drawing upon several sheets of large paper 

 pasted on canvass. The most celebrated are the cartoons of 

 Raphael. See Lesson on Painting. 



Our emotions of beauty are various ; and, as they gra- 

 dually rise, from object to object, a sort of regular progres- 

 sion may be traced from the faintest beauty to the vastest 

 sublimity. These extremes may be considered as united, 

 by a class of intermediate feelings, for which grandeur might, 

 perhaps, be a suitable term, that have more of beauty, or 

 more of sublimity, according to their place in the scale of 

 emotion. Let us imagine that we see before us a stream 

 gently gliding through fields, rich with all the luxuriance of 

 summer, overshadowed at times by the foliage that hangs 



