offend and disgust the ear, it will completely destroy the effect of the most skilful acting, and render all the sublimity and pathos of the finest tragedy ludicrous.

In objects of vision, however, this influence of organic sensation is much more prevalent in the imitation than the reality: for painting being no ways connected with utility, but intended merely to please, mental habits, prejudices, and associations have much less controul over it than over the objects which it represents. In building and gardening, and still more in dress and furniture, the charms of neatness, propriety, richness, splendor, &c. often reconcile us to those harsh and discordant oppositions of colour, which, if imitated by painting, in all their native crudity, and without being softened and melted together by tender gradations of shadow, become glaringly offensive to every eye, and quite intolerable to those accustomed to the art. In the reality, also, much will depend upon the kind and degree of light to which objects are exposed; whence we can bear, and even require, much more brilliance and opposition of colour in the insides than on the outsides of buildings; and more in articles, that are to be seen by candle-' light, than in those which are to be exposed to day-light for candle-light, moon-light, and twilight melt every thing into one mild hue;

H

CHAP.

V.

Of Sight.

СНАР. v.

Of Sight.

through the harmonising medium of which, things the most offensively glittering, gaudy, and harsh, become beautifully rich, splendid, and mellow. Rembrandt seems to have drawn all his landscapes by twilight, and to have given himself no trouble in the selection of subjects. Extensive plains of barren down, bog, or fallow, intersected by rows of pollard trees, straight canals, mounds, and ditches, are so melted and blended together by this light, and so animated by the magic of his pencil, as to exhibit effects the most beautiful; though if seen or represented in the glare of a mid-day sun, they would be most digustingly ugly. It is the influence of the same kind of light, or of candle-light, which renders gems, brocades, and tissues so beautifully mellow, rich, and splendid in his imitations; while in those of others, even of the greatest painters, they are either harsh or insipid, and not unfrequently both.

PART II.

OF THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS.

CHAPTER I.

OF KNOWLEDGE OR IMPROVED PERCEPTION.

CHAP.

I.

Of improved

1. THE faculty of improved or artificial perception, being acquired in the manner stated in the concluding sections of the last Chapter Perception. of the first Part, continues to improve through the subsequent stages of our lives as long as our minds retain, their vigour; and becomes so far independent of the organs of sense, from which it is derived, and through which it continues to be exercised, that it often exists in its highest state of perfection, when those organs are enfeebled by age, and verging to decay. A musician can tune an instrument, after his hearing has become defective, more accurately than a person with the nicest ear, who has not been used to discriminate sounds; and a vintner, who has been in the constant habit of tasting wine, and attending to its flavour, though his organs be blunted by age and vitiated by intemperance, will distinguish the genuine juice of the grape, or point out the modes and de

220444A

CHAP.
I.

Of improved

grees of its adulteration, with more certainty and precision than an unexperienced person, Perception. who enjoys the utmost sensibility of palate; but who never having accustomed himself to discriminate the impressions upon his organs and observe them separately; nor having any analogous ideas pre-existing in his mind, by which to measure and examine them, considers every compound sensation collectively and alone; and consequently, if the irritation be not very harsh and discordant, finds it pleasant, whatever may have been the causes, which excited it.

2. All refinement of taste, therefore, in the liberal arts, arises, in the first instance, from this faculty of improved perception: for painting, sculpture, music, and poetry are all in their principles, as Aristotle has observed, imitative arts *; whence the only pleasures, which the ignorant and unexperienced receive from them, except those of sensation and mental sympathy before explained, are derived from mere imitation.

3. Man, as the same great philosopher observes, is by nature an imitative animal † ; and, as those faculties of his mind, by which he has risen so much above the rest of the creation, are owing in a great degree, to one individual

imitating another, and still adding something to what he had acquired, imitation is both naturally and habitually pleasing to him *. Hence there is no effort of painting or sculpture so rude, no composition in music or poetry so artless, as not to delight those, who have known no better; and, perhaps, the pleasures, which the ignorant feel from mere imitation, when it has arrived at any degree of exactitude, are more keen and vivid, though less exquisite and exalted, than those which the learned`in art receive from its noblest productions: at least, I have seen more delight expressed at a piece of wax-work, or a painting of a mackarel upon a deal board, or a pheasant on a table, than I ever observed to be produced by the Apollo of the Belvidere, or the Transfiguration of Raphael. It is true that the vulgar express their feelings more boisterously and impetuously than the learned; but it is also true that the feelings of nature have universally more of rapture in them than those which are excited through the medium of science.

4. These feelings of nature, however, are of short duration: for when the novelty of the first impression is over, and the interest of curiosity and surprise has subsided, mere imitation of common objects begins to appear trifling

* lbid. c. vi.

СНАР.

I.

Of improved

Perception.