The sensual elements can be brought into A. by being contemplated in the idea, in place of being enjoyed in the reality. A painter or poet may depict a feast to our minds, and impart a pleasure that differs essentially from the delights of eating and drinking. The iniagined repast has nothing to do with our bodily necessities, the disagreeable accompaniments can be kept out of view; and any number of persons may share in the effect. So with the elements of wealth, power, dignity, and affection, which in their actuality want the liberal character of the true artistic delight; if we can only derive pleasure from the spectacle of them in the hands of the select number of their possessors, they become to us an enjoyment that can be shared by the general multitude, like the blue sky, or the towering peak. It is the fact that mankind find a charm in contemplating the wealthy, the powerful, the elevated, the illustrious, the beloved; and accordingly such elements are freely adopted into artistic compositions.
If all the sensual gratifications could become artistic by being contemplated in idea, or merely thought of, as in the above case of imagining a rich feast, we should have the means of distinctly circumscribing the select region of the beautiful or artistic, and of resolving a difficult problem. It would be admissible for the poet or painter to suggest any of those inferior pleasures to the mind by descriptive touches, and he would thereby elevate them into the region of art. But we find that every mode of sensual gratification is not open to this ideal presentation. Even as regards eating and drinking, exception is taken against the too free allusion to those pleasures; while the sensuality of love is hardly to be suggested through the most distant allusion. We may revel in tales of mere tender emotion—of parental love and of pure affection—but those other subjects are kept at the utmost distance; and we should be said to be reveling in sensuality, if we were merely to indulge in the imagination of those species of delight. There is no help, therefore, but to consider that there are conventional and arbitrary limitations of the sphere of the artist, rendering it quite impossible to draw any clear and universal boundary-line between the beautiful and the agreeable generally.
Sublimity, beauty, grace, harmony, melody, pathos, ideality, picturesqueness, pro portion, order, fitness, keeping, and the ludicrous, though they do not all relate to the so-called beautiful, are all involved in the circle of pleasures now before us; and it is quite obvious that no one fact can run through this variety of designations. There must be a great multitude of agents operating to produce these different impressions, which are related to one another only by attacking in common to the aesthetic class of composi tions. Doubtless, several of these names may be employed to mean the same thing,
being, in fact, partially synonymous terms, as beauty and grace—proportion, fitness, and keeping; but hardly any two terms are synonymous throughout, and there arc distinct conceptions implied in sublimity, beauty, picturesqueness, fitness, and the ludicrous.
Among the elementary sensations and emotions of the human mind that are of a pleasurable kind, a certain number may enter at once into the composition of A.; such are the pleasures of sound and sight, the emotion of surprise, and plot-interest. Others may enter by ideal presentation; as the gratifications of the remaining senses, and the emotions of fear, tenderness, irascibility, power. The feelings more specific to A. are those produced by harmony under its various aspects. When sweet sounds are harmo niously combined, we have the musical art; the painter has a similar aim in reference to colors and forms; and so through all the fine arts, this quality is found recurring as the crowning work of the artistic hand. is so indisputably included within the circle of the testhetical or beautiful as-finely struck harmonies, melodies, or concords. Whatever else may be included in a composition, it is the admission of these that gives the specific charm, although it would be a mistake to dispense with other elements of interest common to art and to every-day life. Story is essential to romance and poetry; sweetness in the separate sounds is requisite for good music; and color in itself imparts aesthetic pleasure apart from harmonious union.
The agreeable effect designated by fitness takes rank with the artistic pleasures; we may call it the aesthetic of the useful. When a work is not only done effectuallr, but done with the appearance of east, or the total absence of restraint, difficulty, and pain, we experience a delight quite different from the satisfaction growing out of the end attained. Much of the pleasure of architectural support is referable to this source.
Among the susceptibilities touched by artistic arrangements may be noticed the sense of unity in multitude, arising when a great number of, things are brought under a com prehensive design, as when a row of pillars is crowned by a pediment. y The use of sim ple figures—the triangle, circle, square, etc.—for and arranging a host of individuals, has the tendency to make an easily apprehended whole out of a numerous host of particulars. In all large works abounding in detail, we crave for sonic such comprehensive plan, whereby we may retain the total, while surveying the parts. A building, an oratorio, a poem, a history, a dissertation, a speech, should have a discern ible principle of order throughout; the discernment of which gives an artistic pleasure, even in works of pure utility.