expression and satisfaction to the revolted feelings of those whom the miserable meannesses alluded to have disgusted, and prevent them from disbelieving in the existence of Art as a subject of rational enquiry altogether.

But the advantage I meant was less this than the service which is always done to any imperfectly ascertained science by suggesting its historical aspect.

If Aristotle both began and completed the science of Logic, it is the single instance of such an achievement. In general a long tentative process, passing through the hands of many individuals, precedes the consummation of so great a work: there must be hewing of wood and drawing of water before the very foundations are laid, and the building itself shall be conceived by David and built by Solomon. The human mind will be seen (represented by a long succession of individuals) to climb from truth to truth (as we should more correctly say, speaking of nature, from fact to fact) toward the distant summit whence the whole subject is to become visible. It is its natural tendency when any new station is gained to be occupied with the novelty of its actual position or in the ardour of its ambition to turn its gaze

only in the direction of its object.

But if this be the wisely ordained necessity of those whose mission is to be themselves the active instruments of the achievement, undoubtedly it is equally the wisdom of the mere observer less to look forward than backward, less to divine what our future path may be than to compare our present position with our previous course. A complete result is by supposition at present unattainable; all we can do, therefore, is to grasp as many of the elements which will go to form that future result as possible. Every distinct impression of Esthetic truth found to have been made either upon the general sense of men or upon our human nature represented by individuals of superior faculties, shews a reality, either subjective or objective, bearing upon the science, and so long as the science remains confessedly imperfect, the possession of more or less of such data becomes the closer or more distant approximation to the possession of the whole truth, seeing that when these data are sufficient they must contain the whole truth, whether the generalization which is to convert it into a science shall have actually taken place or not.

Now it is as representing a class of such data which Ruskin (although fully admitting their exist

ence) does not seem sufficiently to keep in view that I think a work belonging to an earlier stage of the enquiry may at present be usefully studied. In his way, though scarcely as eloquent or poetical, Lessing was as acute an observer as Ruskin, and his perceptions on the objective side were as clear, and it seems to me (possibly from the more limited and exact character of objective truth) firmer and truer than those of Ruskin on the subjective. I wish, however, to enter into no comparisons: either has been a true and able labourer in this field, and we must be grateful to both. A due regard to the results which both have elicited is our present wisdom as tending to keep our minds in that balanced and suspended state which alone profits the student of Esthetics in the present condition of that science. For a bystander like myself it would be presumptuous to pretend to support either side, but I trust it is no offence against modesty to avow my own conviction to be that a substantive truth exists on either side, and that the object of the Esthetic Philosopher henceforth ought to be less the demonstration of facts which may be considered now to be fairly ascertained than the discovery of the law which will harmonise them.

My friend, the Translator, having done me the honour of consulting me with regard to bringing forward this work in an English form, and having been partly influenced perhaps by my encouragement, I have not felt able to refuse his request that I should state here the grounds on which I advised the publication.

LEAMINGTON COLLEGE,

APRIL 23, 1853.

T. BURBIDGE.

xiii

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

who

THE first person who compared painting and poetry with one another was a man of fine feeling, may be supposed to have been conscious that both produced a similar effect upon himself. He felt that through both what is absent seems as if it were present, and appearance takes the form of reality. He felt that both deceive, and that the deception is, in either case, pleasing.

A second observer sought to penetrate below the surface of this pleasure, and discovered that in both painting and poetry it flowed from the same source; for beauty, the idea of which we first abstract from bodily objects, possesses general laws, applicable to more than one class of things, to actions and thoughts as well as to forms.

A third reflected upon the value and distribution of these general laws; and discovered that some are