The surest method therefore, nay, per haps, the only means by which we can expect to perfect our taste, so as to be enabled to relish the higher beauties which either the productions of nature or art present, is by an early and close ap plication to the study and contemplation of those works, which have proved imper vious to the shafts of criticism, and which have been the admiration of ages.
Such are the writings of the best an cient authors, whether in prose or verse, such the astonishing remains of Greek art, which, long hidden in the bowels of the earth, were restored to light under the happy auspices of Lorenzo de Medici and Leo the Tenth. Next to these, as authorities, we may class the best esta blished works of modern date ; and par ticularly those which appeared soon after the revival of letters and arts : mankind having had, in cases of this description, more leisure and opportunity to correct the errors and prejudices to which con temporary opinion is subjected, than can have been possible with respect to very recent productions.
Inquiries concerning beauty have em ployed the pens of many ingenious and learned authors of all the subject, however, is, like nature, inexhaustible, and, like her, perhaps, beyond the reach of human talents fully to comprehend, or satisfactorily to explain. Dr. Hutchin
son's theory of beauty ascribes it to " uni formity amidst variety," (see "Ilutchin son's Inquiry") but another writer (see " Reid's Essay on the Intellectual Powers of Man," ch. iv.) observes, that beauty is found in things so various and so very different in nature, that it is difficult to say wherein it consists, or what can be com mon to all the objects in which it is found. Hogarth, in his Analysis of Beauty," considers the elements of beauty to be, fitness, variety, uniformity, simplicity, in tricacy, and quantity : whereas Mr. Burke in his " Inquiry respecting the Sublime and Beautiful," excludes, from the num ber of real causes of beauty, the propor tion of parts, fitness, or that idea of utili ty, which consists in a part's being well adapted to answer its ends ; and also per fection.
Opinions so contradictory may well jus tify the hypothesis, that beauty is more readily felt than desciibed; and we may set down contented, that we receive light and heat from the sun, although ignorant whether it proceeds from a burning orb or a huge stone.
As the attainment of beauty is a prin cipal aim of the fine arts, the subject will necessarily again fall under discussion, as connected with each of them in particu lar. See Awn, Fine, POETRY, PAINTING,