Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 
447 
from the lower to the higher, from inorganic to organic objects, 
and through these to more perfect animal life, we find a steady in¬ 
crease in the beauty of form, a reduction of it to a standard ever 
more severe and exacting, and a corresponding hilling away of gor¬ 
geous colors, changeable forms, shifting and variable effects. Thus, 
clouds, flowers, foliage, shells, insects, are very variable in outline 
and yet more so in colors. They gain character by masses and 
numbers, give rise to a gay, sprightly, indefinite effect, and supply 
the under-current of our transient pleasures rather than the ob¬ 
jects which hold possession of the mind and fill it with passion. 
Birds, higher up the scale, still retain gayety of colors, but unite it 
to forms and motions and notes of a more definite and finished 
nature; while the still nobler animals owe most of the impressions 
they make to pure form and distinctly expressed character. It is 
this which renders the features of the lion so significant that they 
are the occasion of some of the best effects of sculpture, as seen in 
the works of Thorwaldsen and Canova. In man, u the paragon of 
animals , 11 the entire emphasis of construction is laid on form and 
features; and the health which gives full development to the one, 
and the commanding endowments which fill the others with spirit¬ 
ual power, and disclose them as the seat of a rational spirit, are the 
inlying forces of this most finished product of divine art. We 
know not by what principle of taste, by what canon of wise criti¬ 
cism men can, in dress, fall off from these conditions of progress 
and disguise significant form with meaningless and even monstrous 
form; hide native motion and carriage, and displace character and 
spiritual endowment with the ephemeral effects of extreme fantas¬ 
tic, fatuous fashion. 
We have called fashion fantastic, and if the epithet be a just one, 
it goes far to decide the question whether dress springs from a real 
love of the beautiful and finds any sufficient justification in it. 
Few losses would be greater than for us, especially in consideration 
of the bias of American character, to sacrifice the truly beautiful 
even to a high degree of utility. A misfortune even greater than 
this would be, however, to misconceive and humble beautify itself 
in our alleged pursuit of it. 
Beauty, being an inherent quality of objects, springing out of 
apt, constructive, and fitting relations, will, under essentially the 
same conditions, remain from year to year, from century to century, 
