BEAUTY m NATUEE. 



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 difiicult 

 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. 

 ISTature 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 feehng 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 



