first great mistake that people make in the matter, is position that they must see a thing if it be before their sually eyes. They forget the great truth told them by what Locke, Book ii. chap. 9, § 3-"This is certain,

heir

on.

that whatever alterations are made in the body, if ch not the mind, whatever impressions are made on the parts, if they are not taken notice of within, there is no Fire may burn our bodies, with no other effect than billet, unless the motion be continued to the brain, and e sense of heat or idea of pain be produced in the mind, consists actual perception. How often may a man obhimself, that while his mind is intently employed in the lation of some subjects and curiously surveying some at are there, it takes no notice of impressions of sounding nade upon the organ of hearing, with the same attent uses to be for the producing the ideas of sound! A t impulse there may be on the organ, but it not reachobservation of the mind, there follows no perception, ugh the motion that uses to produce the idea of sound in the ear, yet no sound is heard." And what is here ich all must feel by their own experience to be true, is narkably and necessarily the case with sight than with er of the senses, for this reason, that the ear is not acd to exercise constantly its functions of hearing; it is hed to stillness, and the occurrence of a sound of any atsoever is apt to awake attention, and be followed with on, in proportion to the degree of sound; but the eye, our waking hours, exercises constantly its function of it is its constant habit; we always, as far as the bodily concerned, see something, and we always see in the gree, so that the occurrence of sight, as such, to the ly the continuance of its necessary state of action, and o attention whatsoever, except by the particular nature ity of the sight. And thus, unless the minds of men. cularly directed to the impressions of sight, objects pass lly before the eyes without conveying any impression rain at all; and so pass actually unseen, not merely d, but in the full, clear sense of the word, unseen. nbers of men being pre-occupied with business or care

of some description, totally unconnected with the impressions of sight, such is actually the case with them, they receiving from nature only the inevitable sensations of blueness, redness, darkness, light, etc., and except at particular and rare moments, no more whatsoever.

§ 3. But more or

tion to their na

to what beautiful.

The degree of ignorance of external nature in less in propor- which men may thus remain, depends, therefore, tural sensibility partly on the number and character of the subjects with which their minds may be otherwise occupied, and partly on a natural want of sensibility to the power of beauty of form, and the other attributes of external objects. I do not think that there is ever such absolute incapacity in the eye for distinguishing and receiving pleasure from certain forms and colors, as there is in persons who are technically said to have no ear, for distinguishing notes, but there is naturally every degree of bluntness and acuteness, both for perceiving the truth of form, and for receiving pleasure from it when perceived. And although I believe even the lowest degree of these faculties can be expanded almost unlimitedly by cultivation, the pleasure received rewards not the labor necessary, and the pursuit is abandoned. So that while in those whose sensations are naturally acute and vivid, the call of external nature is so strong that it must be obeyed, and is ever heard louder as the approach to her is nearer, in those whose sensations are naturally blunt, the call is overpowered at once by other thoughts, and their faculties of perception, weak originally, die of disuse. With this kind of bodily sensibility to color and form is intimately connected that higher sensibility which we revere as one of the chief attributes of all noble minds, and as the chief spring of real poetry. I believe this kind of sensibility may be entirely resolved into the acuteness of bodily sense of which I have been speaking, associated with love, love I mean in its infinite and holy functions, as it embraces divine and human and brutal intelligences, and hallows the physical perception of external objects by association, gratitude, veneration, and other pure feelings of our moral nature. And although the discovery of truth is in itself altogether intellectual, and dependent merely on our powers of physical perception and abstract intellect, wholly independent of our moral nature,

§ 4. Connected with a perfect

state of moral feeling.

impression a

and yet, if h trace them to

the facts tha with which hem that ha and imaginat fall into erro admire and ju

many people serenity of 1 than the skies whereas, the s

the skies of th repose of light Tho, I remem struck with th

mist of Italy. a painting w mpressions, th no such impres

instruments (perception and judgment) are so sharpbrightened, and so far more swiftly and effectively en they have the energy and passion of our moral naring them into action-perception is so quickened by judgment so tempered by veneration, that, practically, deadened moral sensation is always dull in his perf truth, and thousands of the highest and most divine nature are wholly concealed from him, however conindefatigable may be his intellectual search. Thus, farther we look, the more we are limited in the numose to whom we should choose to appeal as judges of l the more we perceive how great a number of manbe partially incapacitated from either discovering or

the

Next to sensibility, which is necessary for the w- perception of facts, come reflection and memory, which are necessary for the retention of them, and n of their resemblances. For a man may receive after impression, and that vividly and with delight, he take no care to reason upon those impressions and to their sources, he may remain totally ignorant of hat produced them; nay, may attribute them to facts ch they have no connection, or may coin causes for have no existence at all. And the more sensibility nation a man possesses, the more likely will he be to rror; for then he will see whatever he expects, and judge with his heart, and not with his eyes. How ole are misled, by what has been said and sung of the f Italian skies, to suppose they must be more blue kies of the north, and think that they see them so; he sky of Italy is far more dull and gray in color than of the north, and is distinguished only by its intense ight. And this is confirmed by Benvenuto Cellini, member, on his first entering France, is especially h the clearness of the sky, as contrasted with the ly. And what is more strange still, when people see ng what they suppose to have been the source of their s, they will affirm it to be truthful, though they feel pression resulting from it. Thus, though day after

§6. How sight de

pends upon previous knowledge.

day they may have been impressed by the tone and warmth of an Italian sky, yet not having traced the feeling to its source, and supposing themselves impressed by its blueness, they will affirm a blue sky in a painting to be truthful, and reject the most faithful rendering of all the real attributes of Italy as cold or dull. And this influence of the imagination over the senses, is peculiarly observable in the perpetual disposition of mankind to suppose that they see what they know, and vice versa in their not seeing what they do not know. Thus, if a child be asked to draw the corner of a house, he will lay down something in the form of the letter T. He has no conception that the two lines of the roof, which he knows to be level, produce on his eye the impression of a slope. It requires repeated and close attention before he detects this fact, or can be made to feel that the lines on his paper are false. And the Chinese, children in all things, suppose a good perspective drawing to be as false as we feel their plate patterns to be, or wonder at the strange buildings which come to a point at the end. And all the early works, whether of nations or of men, show, by their want of shade, how little the eye, without knowledge, is to be depended upon to discover truth. The eye of a Red Indian, keen enough to find the trace of his enemy or his prey, even in the unnatural turn of a trodden leaf, is yet so blunt to the impressions of shade, that Mr. Catlin mentions his once having been in great danger from having painted a portrait with the face in half-light, which the untutored observers imagined and affirmed to be the painting of half a face. Barry, in his sixth lecture, takes notice of the same want of actual sight in the early painters of Italy. "The imitations," he says, "of early art are like those of children -nothing is seen in the spectacle before us, unless it be previously known and sought for; and numberless observable differences between the age of ignorance and that of knowledge, show how much the contraction or extension of our sphere of vision depends upon other considerations than the mere returns of our natural optics." And the deception which takes place so broadly in cases like these, has infinitely greater influence over our judgment of the more intricate and less tangible truths of nature. We are constantly supposing that we see

erience only has shown us, or can show us, to have , constantly missing the sight of what we do not know id to be visible and painters, to the last hour of s. are apt to fall in some degree into the error of paintexists, rather than what they can see. I shall prove

the

:

the extent of this error more completely hereafter. culty Be it also observed, that all these difficulties ths in would lie in the way, even if the truths of nature were always the same, constantly repeated and before us. But the truths of nature are one eternal one infinite variety. There is no bush on the face be exactly like another bush ;-there are no two trees rest whose boughs bend into the same network, nor s on the same tree which could not be told one from nor two waves in the sea exactly alike. And out of 3 of various, yet agreeing beauty, it is by long attenthat the conception of the constant character-the 1-hinted at by all, yet assumed by none, is fixed upon nation for its standard of truth.

not singular, therefore, nor in any way disgraceful, najority of spectators are totally incapable of appreciatuth of nature, when fully set before them; but it is ular and disgraceful that it is so difficult to convince heir own incapability. Ask the connoisseur, who has over all Europe, the shape of the leaf of an elm, and es are ninety to one that he cannot tell you; and yet he oluble of criticism on every painted landscape from o Madrid, and pretend to tell you whether they are e or not. Ask an enthusiastic chatterer in the Sistine w many ribs he has, and you get no answer; but it is you do not get out of the door without his informing e considers such and such a figure badly drawn! ize A few such interrogations as these might inheir deed convict, if not convince the mass of spectaare tors of incapability, were it not for the universal reply, that they can recognize what they cannot nd feel what is truthful, though they do not know uth. And this is, to a certain degree, true: a man nize the portrait of his friend, though he cannot,

-at

I.,