once to what is most suitable, or best. In the tasteful arrangement of a group of flowers, we are apt to suppose it is an instinctive impulse by which they are so placed before us, as to display their beauties to the greatest advantage, and produce the most agreeable effect; but it is in fact upon conclusions previously drawn from the principles of pleasure, that the mind operates in contrasting the colours so as to make one heighten the brilliancy of another, and combining the whole group so as to render not only colour, but form, and character conducive to the beauty of the whole.

If taste and judgment differ only in being exercised upon different subjects, it may be asked, why then are not the individuals best skilled in the arrangement of flowers, able legislators, and profound logicians? It is because there are many minds possessed of the faculty of judgment, yet wholly incapable of taking into consideration the nature, relation, and application of the laws which regulate public action, and private thought; but if such individuals could be made to understand these laws, there is no reason why they should not judge as correctly of their effect, as of that of a group of flowers. In order to compose a taste

ful bouquet it is only necessary that we should have clear perceptions of form and colour; in order to invent laws for the government of nations, or systematize the thoughts and “imaginations of man's heart," we must have distinct ideas of physical force, and moral good, of action, and motive, of power, and integrity.

It is a familiar, but not the less important and comprehensive fact, that every thing has a proper place; and the faculty which enables us to ascertain by instantaneous perception what is, or is not the proper place of any object, is taste that by which we ascertain the same fact by conviction is judgment. We admire, and derive pleasure from the operation of the former; we reverence, and derive benefit from that of the latter. Our looks, words, movements, and trifling pursuits come under the cognizance of taste; nor let its superficial character lessen the value of this universal test of beauty and harmony, which are the two grand sources of our enjoyment. It is not the profound nature of the cases in which it acts, but their frequent recurrence in the ordinary walks of life, as well as their immense variety and number, which renders the influence of taste so important to our happiness. If from the causes

upon which it operates, we are liable to receive pain or pleasure every moment of our lives, the cultivation of this faculty must indeed be of no inconsiderable weight in the aggregate of human affairs; yet how to cultivate it so as ultimately to produce the greatest good, is a delicate and difficult question. Refined to the most acute perception of all the degrees which lie between the remote extremes of beauty and deformity-of pleasure and pain, taste is any thing but a blessing; unless where there is judgment to go deeper into the essential qualities of things, and to discover a moral good beneath a physical evil; because the outward aspect of our world, even with all its loveliness, and the external character of our circumstances, even with all our enjoyments, are such as often to present pictures repulsive and abhorrent to perceptions more delicate than deep. But the cultivation of taste when confined as it ought to be to its proper place, and limited to its proper degree, is eminently conducive to our happiness, and eventually to our good. Taste should even rule itself, and set bounds to its own existence, for its laws are as much violated when we are too sublime for useful service, and too delicate for duty, as

when we descend to the use of vulgar epithets, and ape the absurdities of our inferiors.

As a proof of the immediate application of taste, we seldom wholly approve of the language and customs of past ages. That the same astonishing productions of art which adorned the most enlightened eras of Grecian history, should remain to be models of excellence at the present day, is because of their relation to the senses, whose power in assisting the judgment is limited to a degree of cultivation; but language and social customs having more immediate relation to the intellectual and moral constitution of man, are continually fluctuating, or progressing, without any perceptible limitation to their capability of improvement. We cannot look back to the literature of the past century, and pay our just tribute to its superiority in force of expression, without at the same time being struck with words and phrases, which to say the least of them, arrest our attention, and often impede, by the difference of their associations, our perception of their sense and application. Indeed so wide is this difference, that many minds endowed with fine taste and sensibility, are now incapable of appreciating the beauties of

VOL. II.

Shakespeare; though we own there is some cause to suspect of such minds, that they are deficient both in imagination and power, or they would unquestionably be lifted above what appear to us now the absurdities of this extraordinary writer, by the unrivalled splendour of his mighty genius. Insensible to the brilliance of a great luminary, which reveals a world of glory, these fastidious critics take the light of their tiny perceptions into partial spots of shade, and extracting from thence the rank nettle or the wandering weed, cry out that by their own delicacy they have made this laudable discovery. Better would it beseem an elevated soul to pass on, and leave such blemishes unnoticed; or to prove its just and noble admiration of true genius, rather than its capability of discovering petty faults.

Where the poet is gifted with judgment, and not with taste, he is compelled to ponder at every verse; and while he weighs the merit of his subject, compares his ideas, and new models his expressions, the warmth of his poetic fervour is expended, and that which ought to appear to us as if it flowed from a natural and irrepressible impulse, becomes painful and laborious, both to himself, and to