effect. Why are such simulations of nature, as wax-work figures of men

and women, so disagreeable? Because not finding the motion and the

life which we expected, we are shocked as by a falsehood, every

circumstance of detail, which before induced us to be interested,

making the distance from truth more palpable. You set out with a

supposed reality and are disappointed and disgusted with the deception;

while, in respect to a work of genuine imitation, you begin with an

acknowledged total difference, and then every touch of nature gives

you the pleasure of an approximation to truth. The fundamental

principle of all this is undoubtedly the horror of falsehood and the love

of truth inherent in the human breast. The Greek tragic dance rested on

these principles, and I can deeply sympathize in imagination with the

Greeks in this favorite part of their theatrical exhibitions, when I call to

mind the pleasure I felt in beholding the combat of the Horatii and

Curiatii most exquisitely danced in Italy to the music of Cimarosa.

Secondly, as to nature. We must imitate nature! yes, but what in nature

-all and everything? No, the beautiful in nature. And what then is the

beautiful? What is beauty? It is, in the abstract, the unity of the

manifold, the coalescence of the diverse; in the concrete, it is the union

of the shapely (formosum ) with the vital. In the dead organic it

depends on regularity of form, the first and lowest species of which is

the triangle with all its modifications, as in crystals, architecture, etc.; in

the living organic it is not mere regularity of form, which would

produce a sense of formality; neither is it subservient to anything beside

itself. If may be present in a disagreeable object, in which the

proportion of the parts constitutes a whole; it does not arise from

association, as the agreeable does, but sometimes lies in the rupture of

association; it is not different to different individuals and nations, as has

been said, nor is it connected with the ideas of the good, or the fit, or

the useful. The sense of beauty is intuitive, and beauty itself is all that

inspires pleasure without, and aloof from, and even contrarily to,

interest.