for though it might be absurd to suppose that these former feelings could give us a new sense, it is far from absurd, that the objects of them may become to our minds the subjects of new pleasing emotions and of emotions similar, perhaps, to those which were formerly excited by other objects. That we are originally susceptible of various other emotions is admitted, and even contended, by those who would trace to the suggestion of them our feeling of beauty; and these original susceptibilities they will surely-allow, may, like the susceptibility of beauty, be variously modified, by the circumstances in which the individual may be placed, and may be produced, in consequence of former associations, in circumstances in which they otherwise would not have arisen. There is not a single emotion, indeed, which does not admit of constant modifications in this way. Our love, our hate, our wonder, are at least as much dependant on the nature of our past feelings, as our delight in what seems to us beautiful. Why should this one emotion, then, be expected to differ from our other emotions, which are confessedly capable of being awakened or suspended, in different circumstances, though the mere object of contemplation be the same? To those, accordingly, who, from being accustomed to consider beauty as either permanent and unchangeable in objects, or as absolutely contingent on accidental associations, may find some difficulty in reconciling original beauty, of any sort or degree, with that influence of circumstances, which may modify it or overcome it, it may be of some assistance, to consider the anal ogy of our other emotions;—since we shall find, that this original tendency, subject to modification, which I suppose to take place in our feelings of beauty-is what truly takes place in our other emotions; with which, therefore, the emotion of beauty, in its variations in various circumstances, may well be supposed to correspond. Let us take, for example, our emotions of desire-feelings as lively, at least, as our emotion of beauty, and in many cases far more lively -which arise in the mind, too, in circumstances in some degree similar,―not on the contemplation of a present delightful object, indeed, like beauty, but on the contemplation of some delight that is future. No one, surely, whatever his opinion may be, as to the original indifference of objects that now seem beautiful, will maintain, that all objects, painful and pleasing, are equally capable, originally, of exciting the emotion of desire. Yet no one, I con

ceive, will deny, that it is in the power of general fashion, or of various accidental circumstances, to render objects desirable, or, in other words, capable of exciting, when contemplated, this emotion of desire, that otherwise would have been not indifferent merely, but perhaps positively disliked; and to make objects cease to be desirable, which would have been highly prized by us, but for the factitious circumstances of society, or accidents that may have operated on ourselves with peculiar influence. There is a mode, in our very wishes, as there is a mode in the external habiliments which we wear; and in their different objects, the passions of different ages and countries are at least as various, as the works of taste, to which they give their admiration. When, at the Restoration, the austerity of the Protectorate was succeeded by the disgraceful profligacy of the royal court, and when there was an immediate change of the desirableness of certain objects, as if our very susceptibilities of original passion had been changed, we do not suppose that any real change took place in the native constitution of man. In every original moral tendency or affection, he was precisely what he was before. In all ages, the race of mankind are born with certain susceptibilities, which, if circumstances were not different, would lead them as one great multitude to form very nearly the same wishes; but the difference of circumstances produces a corresponding diversity of passions, that scarcely seems to flow from the same source. In like manner, the race of mankind, considered as a great multitude, might be in all ages endowed with the same susceptibilities of the emotion of beauty, which would lead them, upon the whole, to find the same pleasure, in the contemplation of the same objects,—if different circumstances did not produce views of utility, and associations of various sorts, that diversify the emotion itself. It is the same in different periods of life of the same individual; the desirableness of objects varying at least, as much as the feeling of beauty. I may add, that, as there seem to be, in individuals, original constitutional tendencies to certain passions, rather than to others; so there might be a constitutional difference, with respect to the original susceptibility of the emotion of beauty, that, of itself, might render certain objects more delightful to certain minds than others. But still, when the race of mankind are considered as one great multitude,

-as their native original tendencies to passion may be considered as the same,-their native original susceptibilities of the pleasing impressions of beauty, in certain cases, might also have been the same; though as these original tendencies, if they did exist, might yet admit of being variously diversified, to measure them by any standard, would even in these circumstances, be still as impracticable, as if there were no original tendencies whatever. There is no standard of desire; and as little, even in these circumstances, should we expect to find an absolute standard of beauty. All of which we might philosophically speak, would be the agreement of the greater number of mankind in certain desires, and the agreement of the greater number of cultivated minds in certain emotions of beauty.

That the feeling of beauty, which so readily arises when the mind is passive, and capable, therefore, of long trains of reverie, should not arise when the mind is busied with other objects of contemplation,-or even in any very high degree, when the mind is employed in contemplating the beautiful object itself, but in contemplating it, with a critical estimation of its merits or defects, -is no proof, as has been supposed, that trains of associate images are essential to the production of the emotion, but is what might very naturally be suspected, though no such trains were at all concerned. The feeling of beauty, it must be remembered, is not, as I have already said, a sensation, but an emotion. A certain perception must previously exist; and though the perception may have a tendency to induce that different state of mind which constitutes the emotion, it has a tendency also, by suggestion, to induce many other states, and in certain circumstances, when there are any strong desires in the mind, may induce those other states, which may be accordant with the paramount existing desires, more readily than the emotion which has no peculiar accordance with them. It is the same in this case, too, with our other emotions, as with that of beauty. When we are intent on a train of study, how many objects occur to the mind, which, in other circumstances, would be followed by other emotions,-by various desires, for example, but which are not followed by their own specific desires, merely in consequence of our greater interest in the subject, the relations of which we are studying. Nor is this peculiar to our

emotions only. It extends in some degree even to our very sensations. In two individuals who walk along the same meadow, the one after suffering some very recent and severe affliction, and the other with a light heart, and an almost vacant mind, how very different, in number and intensity, are the mere sensations that arise at every step! Yet we surely do not deny, to him who scarcely knows that there are flowers around him, an original susceptibility of being affected by the fragrance of that very violet, the faint odour of which is now wafted to him in vain.

The great argument, however, which is urged by the deniers of any original beauty, is founded on that very view of the fluctuations of all our emotions of this class, which I endeavoured to exhibit to you in the early part of this Lecture. When we consider the changes of every kind, with respect to all, or, at least, nearly all the varieties of this order of our emotions,-not merely in different nations, or different ages of the world, but even in the same individual, in the few years that constitute his life, and in many important respects, perhaps, in a few months or weeks,— can we suppose, they say, that amid these incessant changes, of which it is not difficult for us to detect the source, there should be any beauty that deserves the honourable distinction of being independent and original? In what respect, however, does this formidable argument differ from that equally formidable argument, which might be urged against the distinctions of truth and falsehood?-those distinctions, which it is impossible for the very sceptic, who professes to deny them, not to admit in his own internal conviction, and the validity of which, the deniers of any original beauty would be far from denying, or even wishing to weaken; since the very wish to convince of the truth of their theory, whatever it may be, must be founded on this very distinction of a peculiar capacity in the mind, of a feeling of the truth of certain arguments, rather than of certain opposite arguments. If our tastes, however, fluctuate, do not our opinions of every sort vary in like manner? and is not the objection in the one case, then, as powerful as in the other; or, if powerless in one, must it not be equally powerless in both? I need not speak of different nations, or ages of the world, in this, more than of the other case, -of the very different systems of opinions of savage, semibarbarous, and civilized life, in all their varieties of climate and state.

Here, too, it is sufficient to think of one individual,-to compare the wisdom of the mature well-educated man, with the ignorance of his boyhood, and the proud, but irregular and fluctuating acquirements of his more advanced youth,—and if, notwithstanding all these changes, when perhaps not a single opinion ultimately remains the same, we yet cannot fail to believe, that truth is something more than a mere arbitrary feeling, the result of accidental circumstances, that there is, in short, an original tendency in the mind to assent to certain propositions, rather than to certain other propositions opposite to these,-we surely are not entitled to infer from the changes in the emotion of beauty, not more striking, that all in the mental susceptibility of it, is arbitrary and accidental.

Again, however, I must repeat, that in this review of the ar gument, I am not contending for the positive originality and independence of any species of beauty, but merely considering proba bilities; and that, although, from the circumstances as they appear to us, I am led to adopt the greater probability of some orig inal tendencies to feelings of this class, I am far from considering these as forming the most important of the class, or even as bearing any high proportion, in number or intensity, to the multitude of delightful feelings of the same order, that beam forever, like a sort of radiant atmosphere within, on the cultivated mind, becoming thus, in their ever increasing variety, one of the happiest rewards of years of study, that were too delightful in themselves to need to be rewarded,