49 



woman, are often, in that sense, full of 

 picturesque beauty ; and certainly the ap- 

 plication of the last term to such objects, 

 must tend to confuse our ideas : but were 

 the expression restrained to those objects 

 only, in which the picturesque and the 

 beautiful are mixed together, and so mixed* 

 that the result, according to common ap- 

 prehension, is beautiful; and were it never 

 used when the picturesque (as it no less 

 frequently happens) is mixed solely with 

 what is terrible, ugly, or deformed, I should 

 highly approve of the expression, and wish 

 for more distinctions of the same kind. 



In reality, the picturesque not only dif- 

 fers from the beautiful in those qualities 

 which Mr. Burke has so justly ascribed to 

 it, but arises from qualities the most dia- 

 metrically opposite. 



According to Mr. Burke, one of the 

 most essential qualities of beauty is smooth- 

 ness : now as the perfection of smoothness 

 is absolute equality and uniformity of sur- 

 face, wherever that prevails there can be 

 but little variety or intricacy; as, for in- 



VOL. I. £ 



