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BEAUTY. 



Beauty. No man ever possessed a happier combination of 

 the talents necessary to a preacher than Beausobre. 

 His sermons were distinguished by a fire of imagir.-i- 

 tion, a richness and elegance of diction, an originali- 

 ty of thought even on the most common topics, and 

 a felicity of illustration, which have seldom been sur- 

 passed. His elocution, naturally easy and graceful, 

 was aided by the advantages of a most engaging 

 cpuntenance, a noble figure, and a graceful air. 

 And his instructions, flowing warm from his heart, 

 were recommended and enforced by the bright ex- 

 ample of a life actively employed in the exercise of 

 every Christian virtue. He died on the 5th of June 

 1738, at the age of eighty years; retaining to the 

 last the possession of his faculties, and the full re- 

 lish of life. See Memoire sur la Vie de Beausobre, 

 prefixed to the 2d vol. of his Hist, du Manicheism. 



BEAUTY, in its most general sense, denotes, any 

 quality, or assemblage of qualities, in objects, which 

 are calculated to excite in the observer, emotions of 

 delight and complacency. In a more limited and 

 appropriate sense, beauty is restricted to those qua- 

 lities of objects which excite in the mind a species of 

 tenderness, fondness, or affection. The great lati- 

 titude with which the term has been employed, in- 

 volves the analysis of the beautiful in a considerable 

 degree of difficulty and obscurity. Thus we not only 

 speak of a beautiful woman, and a beautiful flower, 

 in which cases we employ the term in its most appro- 

 priate sense ; but we speak also of a beautiful build- 

 ing, a beautiful piece of music, a beautiful poem, a 

 beautiful machine, a beautiful theorem in geometry, 

 or a beautiful trait of human conduct ; examples of 

 excellence involving qualities of extremely different 

 kinds. A similar ambiguity exists in the terms sig- 

 nificant of beauty in every known language. In 

 Greek to xx, or the epithet beautiful, was as fre- 

 quently applied to moral excellence as to the merely 

 pleasing in objects ; and in Latin, pulchrum had the 

 same ambiguity, as we learn from its being so com- 

 monly conjoined with honestum. 



In the observations which are to follow on this 

 subject, we shall first inquire into the nature of these 

 qualities which constitute beauty strictly so called ; and 

 then we may perhaps be able to ascertain the origin of 

 that analogical application of the term, by which it 

 is made to characterise a class of objects so extreme- 

 ly different from each other as those to which it is 

 applied in the vague and ordinary usage of language. 

 Baauty, strictly so called, we have said, denotes those 

 qualities of objects which excite in the mind a species 

 of affection or tenderness. Even in this limited sense 

 of the word, it comprehends qualities which are ex- 

 ceedingly various and diversified. There is not only 

 a beauty of forms and of colours, but there is a beau- 

 ty of motions, and a beauty of sounds. There is a 

 beauty too, it may be said, though doubtless of a 

 more debased'and sensual kind, which is addressed to 

 the smell, the taste, and the touch. And there is 

 not only a physical beauty, or a beauty in the quali- 

 ties of material objects, but there is a moral beauty ; 

 a beauty in the sentiments and dispositions of the hu- 



man mind, by which affection is more powerfully 

 roused than by -any combination of merely physical 

 properties. 



Much ingenuity has been exercised in the attempt 

 to determine in what all these various qualities agree, 

 or to assign the true theory of the beautiful ; a sub 

 ject no doubt of considerable curiosity and interest. 

 The ancients, indeed, have left us very little explicit 

 on the philosophy of beauty. Plato has two dia- 

 logues on the beautiful ; but in neither of them docs 

 lie attempt to explain in what it consists, unless by 

 mentioning in general, symmetry and proportion a* 

 its constituent qualities. Cicero, in the same indefi- 

 nite manner, speaks of order and correspondence of 

 parts as qualities t>f beautiful objects; but he give* 

 no illustration of his doctrine, nor docs he represent 

 it as by any means complete. 



Before descending to the systems of the moderns, 

 we may mention tire theory of the venerable father 

 Augustine, who, in the fourth book of his Confes- 

 sions, speaks of two or three treatises which he had 

 written, in his younger days, concerning beauty ; but 

 some way or other he had lost them, and he does 

 not appear anxious that they should ever be re- 

 covered. According to his view of the subject, 

 which may be collected from other parts of his wri- 

 tings, beauty consists in unity of parts, or in perfect 

 symmetry.* " And," adds the father, " because all 

 bodies upon earth are made of various elements, we 

 are not here to look for perfect beauty, which is to be 

 found alone in the one all perfect Supreme Being. 

 But surely a rose has much less unity of parts than a 

 ground worm ; although the former is beautiful, the 

 latter altogether disgusting." 



The theory which resolves beauty into a certain 

 symmetry and determinate proportion of parts, and 

 which seems to have been that entertained by the 

 Greek and Roman philosophers, has had many stre- 

 nuous advocates among the moderns, particularly in 

 the class of artists, who seem to have thought that 

 the constituent elements of the beautiful might be 

 with certainty detected, and even measured in the 

 most approved models of statuary and painting. The 

 insufficiency of this theory has been very satisfactori- 

 ly proved by Mr Burke, who is very decidedly of 

 opinion, that " beauty is no idea belonging to men- 

 suration ; nor has it any thing to do with calculation 

 and geometry." To establish this opinion, he exa- 

 mines beauty, as it appears in vegetables, in the in- 

 ferior animals, and in man ; and in all these cases he 

 finds that there are no certain measures on which the 

 beautiful can be said, in any degree, to depend. 



In the vegetable creation, we find nothing so beau- 

 tiful as flowers ; but flowers are almost of every sort 

 of shape and arrangement ; and are turned and fa- 

 shioned into an infinite variety of forms. What pro- 

 portion do we discover between the stalks and the 

 leaves of flowers, or between the leaves and the pis- 

 tils ? How does the slender stalk of the rose agree 

 with the bulky head under which it bends ? The 

 flower of the apple, on the other hand, is very small, 

 and grows upon a large tree; yet the rose and the 

 apple blossom are both beautiful, and the plants that 



Beaut*-. 



* Qmnit porro pulckritudinis forma unitas est. 

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