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influential principle of our nature, the love of change, and he power of contrast. Receiving variety, only as that which accomplishes Unity, or makes it perceived, its operation is found to be very precious.

The effect of variety is best exemplified by the melodies of music, wherein, by the differences of the notes, they are connected with each other in certain pleasant relations. This connexion taking place in quantities is Proportion.

This influence of apparent proportion—a proportion, be it observed, which has no reference to ultimate ends, but which is itself, seemingly, the end and object of operation in many of the forces of nature-is therefore at the root of all our delight in any beautiful form whatsoever.

It is utterly vain to endeavor to reduce this proportion to finite rules, for it is as various as musical melody, and the laws to which it is subject are of the same general kind, so that the determination of right or wrong proportion is as much a matter of feeling and experience as the appreciation of good musical composition; not but that there is a science of both, and principles which may not be infringed, but that within these limits the liberty of invention is infinite, and the degrees of excellence, infinite also.

III.-REPOSE.

There is probably no necessity more imperatively felt by the artist, no test more unfailing of the greatness of artistical treatment, than that of the appearance of repose, and yet there is no quality whose semblance in mere matter is more difficult to define or illustrate. Nevertheless, I believe that our instinc

tive love of it, as well as the cause to which I attribute that love, (although here also, as in the former cases, I contend not for the interpretation, but for the fact,) will be readily allowed by the reader. As opposed to passion, changefulness, or laborious exertion, repose is the especial and separating characteristic of the eternal mind and power; it is the "I am" of the Creator opposed to the "I become" of all creatures; it is the sign alike of the supreme knowledge which is incapable of surprise, the supreme power which is incapable of labor, the supreme volition which is incapable of change; it is the stillness of the beams of the eternal chambers laid upon the variable waters of ministering creatures; and as we saw before that the infinity which was a type of the Divine nature on the one hand, became yet more desirable on the other from its peculiar address to our prison hopes, and to the expectations of an unsatisfied and unaccomplished existence, so the types of this third attribute of the Deity might seem to have been rendered farther attractive to mortal instinct, through the infliction upon the fallen creature of a curse necessitating a labor once unnatural and still most painful, so that the desire of rest planted in the heart is no sensual nor unworthy one, but a longing for renovation and for escape from a state whose every phase is mere preparation for another equally transitory, to one in which permanence shall have become possible through perfection. Hence the great call of Christ to men, that call on which St. Augustine fixed essential expression of Christian hope, is accompanied by the promise of rest; and the death-bequest of Christ to men is "peace."

Hence, I think there is no desire more intense or more exalted than that which exists in all rightly disciplined minds, for the evidences of repose in external signs. I say fearlessly respecting repose, that no work of art can be great without in, and that all art is great in proportion to the appearance

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of it. It is the most unfailing test of beauty, whether of matter or of motion; nothing can be ignoble that pos sesses it, nothing right that has it not; and in strict proportion to its appearance in the work, is the majesty of mind to be inferred in the artificer. Without regard to other qua lities, we may look to this for our evidence, and by the search of this alone we may be led to the rejection of all that is base, and the accepting of all that is good and great, for the paths of wisdom are all peace.

We shall see by this light three colossal images standing up side by side, looming in their great rest of spirituality above the whole world-horizon; Phidias, Michael Angelo, and Dante; and then, separated from their great religious thrones only by less fulness and earnestness of faith, Homer and Shakspeare: and from these we may go down step by step among the mighty men of every age, securely and certainly observant of diminished lustre in every appearance of restlessness and effort, until the last trace of true inspiration vanishes in the tottering affectations, or the tortured inanities of modern times. There is no art, no pursuit, whatsoever, but its results may be classed by this test alone; everything of evil is betrayed and winnowed away by it, glitter and confusion and glare of color, inconsistency or absence of thought, forced expression, evil choice of subject, over accumulation of materials, whether in painting or literature; the shallowness of the English schools of art, the strained and disgusting horrors of the French, the distorted feverishness of the German :— pretence, over-decoration, over-division of parts in architec ture, and again in music, in acting, in dancing, in whatsoever art, great or mean, there are yet degrees of greatness or mean ness entirely dependent on this single quality of repose.

But that which in lifeless things ennobles them by seeming to indicate life, ennobles higher creatures by indicating the

exaltation of their earthly vitality into a Divine vitality; and raising the life of sense into the life of faith-faith, whether we receive it in the sense of adherence to resolution, obedience to law, regardfulness of promise, in which from all time it has been the test as the shield of the true being and life of man, or in the still higher sense of trustfulness in the presence, kindness, and word of God; in which form. it has been exhibited under the Christian dispensation. For whether in one or other form, whether the faithfulness of men whose path is chosen and portion fixed, in the following and receiving of that path and portion, as in the Thermopyla camp; or the happier faithfulness of children in the good giving of their Father, and of subjects in the conduct of their king, as in the "Stand still and see the salvation of God" of the Red Sea shore, there is rest and peacefulness, the "standing still" in both, the quietness of action determined, of spirit unalarmed, of expectation unimpatient: beautiful, even when based only as of old, on the self-command and self-possession, the persistent dignity or the uncalculating love of the creature,* but more beautiful yet when the rest is one of humility instead of pride, and the trust no more in the resolution we have taken, but in the hand we hold.

* "The universal instinct of repose,

The longing for confirmed tranquillity
Inward and outward, humble, yet sublime.
The life where hope and memory are as one.
Earth quiet and unchanged; the human soul
Consistent in self rule; and heaven revealed
To meditation, in that quietness."

WORDSWORTH. Excursion, Book i

IV. SYMMETRY.

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In all perfectly beautiful objects, there is found the opposi tion of one part to another and a reciprocal balance obtained in animals the balance being commonly between opposite sides (note the disagreeableness occasioned by the exception in flat fish, having the eyes on one side of the head), but in vegetables the opposition is less distinct, as in the boughs on opposite sides of trees, and the leaves and sprays on each side of the boughs, and in dead matter less perfect still, often amounting only to a certain tendency towards a balance, as in the opposite sides of valleys and alternate windings of streams. In things in which perfect symmetry is from their nature impossible or improper, a balance must be at least in some measure expressed before they can be beheld with pleasure. Hence the necessity of what artists require as opposing lines or masses in composition, the propriety of which, as well as their value, depends chiefly on their inartificial and natural invention. Absolute equality is not required, still less absolute similarity. A mass of subdued color may be balanced by a point of a powerful one, and a long and latent line overpow ered by a short and conspicuous one. The only error against which it is necessary to guard the reader with respect to symmetry, is the confounding it with proportion, though it seems strange that the two terms could ever have been used as synonymous. Symmetry is the opposition of equal quantities to each other. Proportion the connection of unequal quantities with each other. The property of a tree in sending out equal boughs or opposite sides is symmetrical. Its sending out shorter and smaller towards the top, proportional. In the human face its balance of opposite sides is symmetry, its division upwards, proportion.

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