tion is destroyed, though the noise may continue the same as when it first caused these impressive sensations. We can from this example perceive how objects may affect us, which do not seem to possess, as they really have not any inherent quality of causing, these feelings.

In the same manner, though in different kind and degree, we can understand how the sight of a picture, or the description of a poem, should affect us nearly in the same way as the sight of the original; nor is it more difficult to conceive why the prospect of a cottage should intimately bring to our minds an image of the cottager and his family, and thus, through an infinite variety of instances more familiar or remote. Now taking this theory, what a multitude of phenomena connected with the arts will it satisfactorily explain to the enquirer! Why are men imbued with classical learning, delighted with scenes, which to a man who never heard of Parnassus or the Forum are mean, and the pleasure derived from them wholly unintelligible?

"What is it," says Mr. Alison eloquently, "that constitutes that emotion of sublime delight, which every man of common sensibility feels upon the first prospect of Rome? It is not the scene of destruction which is before him. It is not the Tiber, diminished in his imagination to a paltry stream flowing amid the ruins of that magnificence which it once adorned. It is not the triumph of superstition over the wreck of human greatness, and its monuments erected upon the very spot where the first honors of humanity have been gained. It is ancient Rome which fills his imagination. It is the country of Cæsar, and Cicero, and Virgil which is before him. It is the mistress of the world which he sees, and who seems to him to rise from her tomb to give laws to the universe. All that the labors of his youth, or the studies of his mature age, have acquired, with regard to the history of this great people, open at once before his imagination, and present him with a field of high and solemn imagery, which can never be exhausted. Take from him, says Mr. Alison, these associations, conceal from him that it is Rome that he sees, and how different would be his emotions!"

Different, indeed, as the eloquent author remarks, would be his emotions, but much greater would the difference be in him who never had informed himself of the history and manners of civilized Romewho, ignorant of the history and productions of her statesmen, philosophers, orators, and poets, vacantly surveys the scenes pointed out by a guide, and wonders for what he came so far. Alas! how many journey from Rome to Brundusuim by the Appian Way, how many see the Esquiline Hills, traverse the site where Cicero's villa once stood, and sigh for the lively and intelligible beauties of Margate Pier!

Why does a statue of Apollo move the man of sensibility and knowledge, while thousands are untouched by it? because they are ignorant of that which is familiar to his mind, the ascribed divinity of the God, his mythological attributes, his beauty, and his power. In what manner does the prospect of a coin, a flower, an insect, affect

an antiquarian or a naturalist, but by its association of former pleasures with present objects, in inducing pleasant trains of thought of past or future events and delights? The charm of these objects all the while remaining to many, who have not the same associations, a dark and inscrutable mystery.

In addition, we cannot, upon any other principle, explain those various relations of internal emotions with various objects which we see established among whole classes of men, throughout entire countries, and which form, what are called, national tastes. Take, for example, the much quoted case of female beauty-what varied and inconsistent standards should we find established in Africa, Asia, Lapland, Greece, Tartary, and Circassia! Nothing, however, can become easier of explanation, when we consider that female like any other kind of beauty, consists in reminding us of natural sympathies and emotions with which they may have been habitually connected.

It is easy to perceive, for instance, if female beauty consists in the visible signs and expressions of youth and health, of gentleness, vivacity, and kindness-then it follows that our ideas of these agreeable qualities may be associated with certain forms, colors, and proportions, which nature may have connected with them. Is it not then plain to demonstration, that these colors and proportions must be beautiful to all who have habitually associated agreeable female qualities with these various external indications of them?

There is an infinite range of equally obvious illustrations, but the mind of every one can supply abundant instances. Which of us, for instance, has not peculiar associations with certain countries, books, houses, styles of female beauty, musical airs, men, objects animate and inanimate. Many which can convey no corresponding feeling to others, yet excite in our own bosoms emotions alternately pleasing, tender, or terrible.

Now, then, let us apply this great and guiding principle of our minds to the immediate object of enquiry before us-the fine arts. If we repeat the question that we asked at first, why are men SO differently affected by a given poem or picture? we may answer with some confidence-because, in the one case, their knowledge and habits of thought furnish them with the materials for multiplied and agreeable associations--in the other case, the same prospect calls up no associated images, because there is none to answer to the callthere is no internal vibration, no unison within, that corresponds—all is cold, lifeless and unmoved.

Take, for example, a poem of love and chivalry. To a man who has treasured, in his mind, the history and character of bygone ages, who has dwelled upon the honor, constancy, sufferings, and valor of the men- and the beauty, refinement, and fidelity of the women, what trains of thought and feeling are suggested: in what a surprising manner does his heart respond to the delineation, under new circumstances of interest and beauty, which such a poem may afford. The scenery, too, the very places in which those actions are performed, are as familiar to the mind of such a man as the commonest tracts on

which he may daily walk. He may never have passed beyond the walls of a city, yet the mountain precipice, the turreted castle, the drawbridge, the lay, and the tournament, may be to him as common and familiar as the every-day sights and scenes of ordinary life.

Let but the poem open with a description of lofty mountains and retired and almost inaccessible recesses, of lakes and castled promontories, of an extensive and uncultivated country, and mountain-echoes repeating the sound of the waterfall, with all the wild and beautiful scenery from which some of our finest poetry draws its principal charm. How instantly do the chords in the bosom of the man of sensibility and cultivated knowledge respond! In what quick succession do whole trains of imagery of adventurous enterprise or retired solitude pass in his mind! The primitive inhabitants of these regions, the romance of their traditionary histories, their superstitions, their feudal attachments, their zealous honor, their combats and exhaustless valor, their fidelity in love; these, and a thousand other recollections, are the materials in a well disciplined mind, ready to answer, at the poet's call, to be moulded, arranged, and produced, in order and beauty at his command.

It is no matter of astonishment that in the mind of such a man, Marmion and the Lady of the Lake should contain character and description which has, on him, precisely the same effect, as a tale of his own times and country would have on a pilgrim remote from home. They are his own friends, his chosen associates, of whom the poet writes, the vicissitudes of their fate, and their valor, affect him as though they were the fortunes of his own house and kindred.

But what do multitudes know, or care to know, of belted knights and the pageantry and manners of chivalry? It can only be illustrated by an extreme case. Suppose a tale, the interest of which should turn on refined notions of honor, or delicacy of love or sentiment, to be told to a race of brutal and plundering savages-or a story, which involved the mysteries of court intrigue and the manners of a palace, to a clown-where would be the interest and sympathy produced by such relations: how, in fact, could there possibly be any associations agreeable or otherwise?

It is not because either are incapable of feeling and appreciating the merits of such incidents, that they are formed by nature incapable of judging of them, but they have not the knowledge, they have no store, though they have the memory, they have not the materials, though they possess the power of using them-ignorance, in short, and nothing but ignorance, in the great majority of instances, is the source of every bad and corrupt taste. Trace it through every other kind and description of poetry, the gay, the moral, or the sentimental, we find the same principles prevail, and, above all, we shall find a confirmation of this fact, that to relish all the higher kinds of poetry, there must be great previous acquisitions of knowledge, without which a man may possess the most refined sensibility, allied to the soundest judgment, and be alike insensible to the charms of poetry, its merits, or its power.

The characteristics of the highest departments of art are, it is true, that works of that order appeal to the general and immutable dispositions of our nature, and that they do not rest their influence upon those secondary and local interests with which the meaner departments content themselves. This is true to a certain extent only, none of the greatest works of art exist, the effects of which are not improved and exalted by a more extensive knowledge, and, consequently, of associations.

This thought, Gentlemen, Members of our Association, is highly encouraging to us, it calls on us loudly to pursue our course of study and improvement. We may not always find the labor agreeable, we may think it sometimes but ill repays itself; but, depend upon it, these views are partial and untrue. We are not only gratifying our present tastes, but are laying up stores of information and materials which shall one day repay us by combinations beautiful and new. Every discussion in which we take part, every idea we gain, is making sure, though perhaps slow, progress. We are, in fact, gradually fitting ourselves to become a proper audience for poets, and more refined and discriminating judges of the arts; and we shall, at no distant time, certainly prove, as our reward, that while the ignorant and uncultivated mind can extract no beauty from literature or morals, much less the arts, there are few things which, to a mind well conditioned and regulated, have not the power to recall and excite emotions of quiet, but deeply seated, pleasure.

PORTRAITS.

THE MAN OF THE WORLD.

There are divers kinds of things dignified with the appellation of portraits, which warrant it in every thing but in the resemblance they are supposed to represent. A lover describes his mistress as a creature of unearthly perfection," she moves a goddess, and she looks a queen." Her eyes are more beauteous than the stars gemming heaven's peaceful canopy of blue when night is enjoying her repose. Her ringlets are wanton as the tendrils of the vine; they fall languishingly on her brow of snow as the latter creeps round the lattice. Her lips are like the opening of ripening rose-buds; and, in her whole shape and person, she is as enchanting as the Paphian queen just sprung from her frothy birth, and sailing on the oceanspray and this is a portrait: one that eyeless Love draws. We must point out one contrary method before we commence our own intended portraits. Mark a jealous and an ugly woman describe a rival. She is unprincipled and adverse to all that is sexual and decorous; ungenerous, uninformed, and evasive; arch, designing, and cold-hearted---because she is likely to be preferred. Her manners are assumed with art and supported with difficulty; her language is

harsh, dissonant, and inexpressibly unwomanly; all her ideas are borrowed, and she claims no kindred with the tenderest offsprings of female character. Her temper is morose and crabbed, changeful as the breeze, and displeasing as the noxious vapor. She is vain and haughty, captious when not admired, and conceited when she is. She is partial in the discovery of her own failings, and delighted in exposing those of others. And as for her person-for herself she could never rank her among her selection of beauties; although there were some whose bad taste complimented her personal charms-and this is a portrait! In the former, fondness was the painter; in the latter, an undisguised enmity. Now we utterly disclaim all sympathy with hatred or indiscriminate affection; and, in all our future graphic descriptions it is to be understood, that candor guides the pen, however satirical may be its movements. We shall begin with a general character, one that every body affects to contemn, and most are inclined to resemble-the Worldling, or Man of the World.

Whatever be the rank of a worldling, his cynosure is selfaggrandizement: this is the life-spring of all his actions, and he will not hesitate, occasionally, to risk the salvation of his soul to benefit his condition. A worldling, from his nature, must be a weather-cock; turns wherever the breeze blows most prosperously; his independence consists in the pursuit of gain, and making this independent of all other operations. He is, strictly speaking, no character, but any character, and shifts his garb with more agility than the most active harlequin. He has bows for one, and scrapes for another; a smirk for this man, and a well-contrived grin for that: he knows where the magnet points, and adapts every thing accordingly. But there is this marked difference in his deportment, he is fawning to his superiors, and haughty and peering to his inferiors: servility to the former is repaid by his disdain for the latter:-his inferiors must be understood as regards worldly fortune, for this, with him, constitutes the primum mobile. His parasitical conduct will be archly displayed, and as cunningly modified. The worldling, if a man of middling respectability, simpers round his patron;-suppose a young" bit of blood," with a flaming title, for instance, "My Lord," will be eternally thrilling on his tongue; his ancient ancestry will be often alluded to, and the grandeur pertaining to patrician birth will be duly magnified. He will be his spaniel, and crawl as caninely before his will, as the other before his master's feet. If my lord is a wit, he will atticise it, and shake his sides before half the joke is uttered: will be his fidus Achates to the meanest abortion of a budding punster. If the lord find it requisite to support his title by turning gambler and a first-rate corinthian, there will be none more alive to the interest of the dice-box, and the romantic beauties of a watch-house. The scenic-like scenes to be witnessed and enjoyed in the metropolitan haunts, will be painted in bewitching colors. Especially will the worldling note all his patron's whims, likes, and dislikes. Does he love a fine pointer? he will never permit one casually to pass in his presence without eloquising on its graces:-and be careful, in particular, to twirl the