sense, or stores of gold to the interests of virtue; and the more clearly we see the law, that man was created to obey his moral sentiments, which hold by right the throne of the soul, the more enamored shall we be with the beauty of virtue. This enlargement of mind of which we speak, produced by an extensive acquaintance with the laws of nature, physical or moral, with the established principles of art and science, will evidently affect our emotions of taste, by inducing new associations of ideas, and new trains of feeling. To a man entirely ignorant of the laws of life, the slender compressed and tapering waist of a human form may seem beautiful, as the expression of delicacy, symmetry and refinement; but let him conceive aright of the tender vital organs unnaturally cramped and denied the free and easy play so essential to life and health, then the spell would at once be broken, and pain succeed to pleasure. As the serpentine motion expressive of delicacy and ease, delights us in every case except that of the serpent itself, where the thought of malignity and peril is awakened, so here, the pleasure of discovering an extraordinary symmetry and delicacy of the human form is dispelled by the ideas of constraint, and pain, and danger, which a compression of that form tends always to produce. Nothing is beautiful but what is true," say the Rhetoricians. This is a universal maxim. Conformity to truth is beauty, real and permanent. Study nature. Seek truth. The laws of nature are distinguished by simplicity, and simplicity has an abiding charm whether it appear in literature or art, in character or manners. 'Thence affectation always displeases when it is discovered. Though affectation be the fashion, yet it appears contemptible as soon as it loses the delusive charm of novelty or a name. In France, fashion once declared for an affected negligence of dress. Thence we hear Montaigne saying, "I have never yet been apt to imitate the negligent garb, observable among the young men of our time, to wear my cloak on one shoulder, my bonnet on one side, and one stocking in somewhat more disorder than the other, meant to express a manly disdain of such exotic ornaments, and a contempt of art." There is no beauty in the cultivated negligence even of trifles. It is only that which is occasional, appropriate, and which indicates a mind engaged and absorbed in something worthy of it which truly pleases. Scott saw it in his Lady of the Lake, when he said, "With head upraised, and look intent, And locks flung back, and lips apart, In listening mood she seemed to stand, No kindred grace adorns her of whom it may be said Coquet and coy, at once her air, Both studied, tho' both seem neglected; Affecting to seem unaffected. Truth to nature, then, is beauty, and to study the laws of nature is to chasten and develope the taste for beauty. Another means of cultivating good taste, is to study the expression of character or design in which the beauty of objects consists. In the material world, every thing beautiful, is a manifestion of certain qualities which are by nature agreeable to the mind; and to ascertain what these are, to point them out distinctly, to classify them, is a pleasing mode of refining and quickening the taste for beauty. "The longer I live," said one, "the more familiar I become with the world around me. Oh! that I could feel the keen zest of which I was susceptible when a boy, and all was new and fair!" "The longer I live," says another, "the more charmed I become with the beauties of a picture or a landscape." The first of these had a natural taste for beauty which he had never developed by studying the expressions of character, which constitute the loveliness of creation. The other, regarding the outward universe as a splendid system of signs directed his attention to the thing signified; loved to contemplate the moral qualities which were beaming forth from all the surrounding objects, and thus saw open before him a boundless field, ever glowing with new colors and fresh attractions. The first, as he heard a piece of music, might from the mechanism of his nature feel some pleasure arising from novelty, or a regular succession of sounds, which familiarity would soon dispel. The other, as he studied the expression of character, which those tones gave forth, as for instance, with the loud sound he associated the ideas of power or peril, with the low, those of delicacy and gentleness, with the acute, those of fear or surprise, with the grave, solemnity and dignity; he would become more and more deeply touched and enraptured, while listening to the music of nature in the voice of singing winds or in the plaint of an Eolian harp, in the crash of thunder or in the roar of the Cataract, in the murmur of the brook or in the moan of the ocean, in the sigh of the zephyr or in the breath of the whirlwind, or while listening to the music of art breaking forth from the loud-sounding trumpet, the muffled drum, or Zion's lyre which hangs upon religion's shrine. CHARLIE MACHREE. A BALLAD. BY WILLIAM J. HOPPIN. I. COME Over, come over The river to me, If ye are my laddie, Bold Charlie Machree. Here's Mary McPherson, Who say ye're faint-hearted, But the dark rolling water I know willna scare ye, For stout is ye'r back, And strong is ye'r arm, Is faithful and warm, |
