individual objects; and the only thing remaining will be the succession, which will then produce precisely the same effect as sameness. This we experience when we let the trees or hedges pass before the fixed eye during a rapid movement in a carriage, or on the other hand, when we suffer a file of soldiers or ranks of men in procession to go on before us without resting the eye on any one in particular. In order to derive pleasure from the occupation of the mind, the principle of unity must always be present, so that in the midst of the multeity the centripetal force be never suspended, nor the sense be fatigued by the predominance of the centrifugal force. This < unity in multeity I have elsewhere stated as the principle of beauty. It is equally the source of pleasure in variety, and in fact a higher term including both. What is the seclusive or distinguishing term between them?

Remember that there is a difference between form as proceeding, and shape as superinduced; the latter is either the death or the imprisonment of the thing;-the former is its self-witnessing and self-effected sphere of agency. Art would or should be the abridgment of nature. Now the fulness of nature is without character, as water is purest when without taste, smell, or colour; but this is the highest, the apex only,-it is not the whole. > The object of art is to give the whole ad

hominem; hence each step of nature hath its ideal, and hence the possibility of a climax up to the perfect form of a harmonized chaos.

To the idea of life victory or strife is necessary; as virtue consists not simply in the absence of vices, but in the overcoming of them. So it is in beauty. The sight of what is subordinated and conquered heightens the strength and the pleasure; and this should be exhibited by the artist either inclusively in his figure, or else out of it and beside it to act by way of supplement and contrast. And with a view to this, remark the seeming identity of body and mind in infants, and thence the loveliness of the former; the commencing separation in boyhood, and the struggle of equilibrium in youth thence onward the body is first simply indifferent; then demanding the translucency of the mind not to be worse than indifferent; and finally all that presents the body as body becoming almost of an excremental nature.

LECTURE XIV.

ON STYLE.

I HAVE, I believe, formerly observed with regard to the character of the governments of the East, that their tendency was despotic, that is, towards unity; whilst that of the Greek

governments, on the other hand, leaned to the manifold and the popular, the unity in them being purely ideal, namely of all as an identification of the whole. In the northern or Gothic nations the aim and purpose of the government were the preservation of the rights and interests of the individual in conjunction with those of the whole. The individual interest was sacred. In the character and tendency of the Greek and Gothic languages there is precisely the same relative difference. In Greek the sentences are long, and the structure architectural, so that each part or clause is insignificant when compared with the whole. The result is every thing, the steps and processes nothing. But in the Gothic and, generally, in what we call the modern, languages, the structure is short, simple, and complete in each part, and the connexion of the parts with the sum total of the discourse is maintained by the sequency of the logic, or the community of feelings excited between the writer and his readers. As an instance equally delightful and complete, of what may be called the Gothic structure as contra-distinguished from that of the Greeks, let me cite a part of our famous Chaucer's character of a parish priest as he should be. Can it ever be quoted too often?

A good man thér was of religiöun
That was a pouré Parsone of a toun,

But riche he was of holy thought and werk;
He was alsó a lerned man, a clerk,

That Cristés gospel trewély wolde preche;
His párishens1 devoutly wolde he teche;
Benigne he was, and wonder diligent,
And in adversite ful patient,

And swiche3 he was ypreved often sithes5;
Ful loth were him to cursen for his tithes,
But rather wolde he yeven out of doute
Unto his pouré párishens aboute
Of his offring, and eke of his substance;
He coude in litel thing have suffisance :
Wide was his parish, and houses fer asonder,
But he ne left nought for no rain ne8 thonder,
In sikenesse and in mischief to visíte

The ferrest9 in his parish moche and lite 10
Upon his fete, and in his hand a staf:
This noble ensample to his shepe he yaf,11
That first he wrought, and afterward he taught,
Out of the gospel he the wordés caught,
And this figure he added yet thereto,
That if gold rusté, what should iren do.
He setté not his benefice to hire,
And lette1o his shepe accombred 13 in the mire,
And ran untó Londón untó Seint Poules,
To seken him a chantérie for soules,

Or with a brotherhede to be withold,

But dwelt at home, and kepté wel his fold,
So that the wolf ne made it not miscarie:
He was a shepherd and no mercenarie;
And though he holy were and vertuous,
He was to sinful men not dispitous,1 14
Ne of his speché dangerous ne digne,1
But in his teching discrete and benigne,
To drawen folk to heven with fairénesse,
By good ensample was his besinesse;

15

3 Such.

6 Give or have given.

9 Farthest.

12 Left.

15 Proud.

But it were any persone obstinat,

What so he were of high or low estat,

Him wolde he snibben 16 sharply for the nones:
A better preest I trowe that no wher non is;
He waited after no pompe ne reverence,
He maked him no spiced conscience,
But Cristés love and his apostles' twelve
He taught, but first he folwed it himselve.*

Such change as really took place in the style of our literature after Chaucer's time is with difficulty perceptible, on account of the dearth of writers, during the civil wars of the 15th century. But the transition was not very great; and accordingly we find in Latimer and our other venerable authors about the time of Edward VI. as in Luther, the general characteristics of the earliest manner;-that is, every part popular, and the discourse addressed to all degrees of intellect ;-the sentences short, the tone vehement, and the connexion of the whole produced by honesty and singleness of purpose, intensity of passion, and pervading importance of the subject.

I

Another and a very different species of style is that which was derived from, and founded on, the admiration and cultivation of the classical writers, and which was more exclusively addressed to the learned class in society. have previously mentioned Boccaccio as the original Italian introducer of this manner, and the great models of it in English are Hooker, Bacon, Milton, and Taylor, although it may be Prologue to Canterbury Tales.

17 Reprove.