enveloped; and the heads of Colonna and his companion were now and then encircled with a heavy vapour. A more per

fect union of the beautiful and magnificent it were difficult to conceive. No object was discernible above: but below, how captivating! Their feet were illumined by the sun, their heads, as it were, touching the clouds! How often, when a boy, has Colonna reposed himself upon a bank, or under the shade of a thicket, and, watching the course of the clouds, has wished, that, like some demi-god of antiquity, he could sit upon their gilded columns, and gaze upon the scene below! The wish was now, in a measure, gratified.

Ingrediturque solo, et caput inter nubila condit.

Above all was gloomy and dark; below, the sun from the west, still illumined the villages and spires, the cottages and woods, the pastures and fields, which lay scattered in every direction; while the Dee, at intervals, swept, in many a graceful curve, along the bottom of the vale.

These objects, so variously blended, and so admirably contrasted with the sombre scene among them, called to the imagination the golden thoughts of Ariosto; and inspired such a combination of feelings, that, for a time, they were absorbed in silent meditation. While they were indulging in this halcyon species of repose, the sounds of village bells, in honour of a recent marriage, were heard, floating on the breeze, from below. The sounds, softened by the distance, and coming from a region so far beneath, lulled them with a choral symphony, that excited the most delightful sensations. And such must ever be the effect on those, whose happiness has not been smothered beneath a load of splendid vacuities ; whom society has not engendered an infinity of wants; in whom ignorance has not awakened pride, arrogance, and vanity; and in whom content has the power of lulling every fever of illegitimate desire.

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ARCHITECTURE IN LANDSCAPE.

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SUCH are the scenes, which Nature exhibits, in a few favoured spots, to raise our wonder and exalt our gratitude: -Scenes which, in their power of giving delight, rank next to the observance of the great and illustrious actions of men. In common landscapes, however, Nature permits herself principally to be embellished by the art and industry of man. Hence arise the impressions, which we derive from various kinds of buildings ;-the house, the palace, and the cottage; mills, churches, forges, bridges, pillars, and temples; towers, castles, and abbeys. But even those objects become more endeared to the eye of taste, when Nature has, in a measure, made them her own, by covering them with moss, lichens, vines, or ivy. Thus Art and Nature, which are so necessary in the formation of a true poet, extend their union of effect to architecture and landscape, by imparting a mutual grace and harmony to both.

The species of ARCHITECTURE, most gratifying to the lover of the picturesque, are the Roman, and the Gothic and few, gifted with genius or imagination, would prefer the light and elegant erections of Greece, seated in a vale, or rising on a knoll, to those proud and noble specimens of Gothic and Roman grandeur, frowning upon mountains, or embattled among woods, as they are exhibited in the awful ruins of towers and monasteries, abbeys and castles. The grace and majesty of the IONIC; the simplicity of the TUSCAN; the magnificence of the CORINTHIAN; the solemnity of the DORIC; and the profuseness of the COMPOSITE; well suited, as they are, to buildings in shrubberies, in parks, and to public erections, in the neighbourhood of large cities, are, for the most part,

a Si la vue de la rivière embellit le château, il faut avouer que la vue du château, qui s'elève presqu'à demi-côté, embellit beaucoup le bord de la rivière.— LA SPECTACLE DE LA NATURE.

entirely out of character, when observed amid the wild and more untameable scenes of Nature. There the rudeness of the BRITISH; the greatness of the ROMAN; the circular tower of the SAXON; and the pointed arch of the ANGLO-NORMAN styles, assimilate, in a far greater degree, with the bold and romantic features of the surrounding scenery; and carry us back to those tumultuous times, in which the tower and long winding passage were equally useful, as securities against the humble banditti of the forest, as from the titled ruffian of a neighbouring castle.

But of all the degrees of modern architecture, most grateful to the lover of the more placid style of landscape, and to the philosophic and elegant mind, the cottage has the most attractive claim. One of those delightful little mansions, situated on the borders of a lake or near the sea shore, over which mountains rear themselves into vast natural amphithe atres; a small garden, with a clear stream winding through it; a library of all that is useful in art and science, or elegant and just in poetry and philosophy; a friend, whom we esteem, and a woman whom we love; who would exchange for the Escurial, or St. Cloud, the palace of the Grand Seigneur, or even the Castle of Windsor itself?

THE BEAUTIFUL, THE HARMONIC, AND THE MAGNIFICENT.

As all that is captivating in scenery may be reduced to three orders;-the beautiful, the picturesque, and the sublime : so may beauty of form and countenance be divided into the three orders of the graceful, the harmonic, and the magnificent. The magnificent applies to the indication of mind and manner in man the graceful to softness, delicacy, and benevolence in woman: the harmonic consists in that exquisite indication of

How beautiful must have been the cottages of Greece! "The Grecians," says Le Roy (from Vitruvius), "disposed their cottages with so much taste and wisdom, that they preserved the form of them, even in their most magnificent buildings."-Diverse Maniere d'adornare i Cammani. Roma, 1769, p. 30.

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every shade of feeling, and in that union of the graceful and magnificent in both, which, as it is the most uncommon, more captivating than either.

Admiration of beauty, whether in bodies, morals, or in scenery, may be denominated intuitive: hence Plato called beauty Nature's masterpiece; and believed that the pleasure, arising from it, was the result of a remembrance of visions, enjoyed in a former state of existence. Theophrastus called it a silent fraud; and Carneades, a silent rhetoric. “It is a quality," says Xenophon, " upon which Nature has affixed the stamp of royalty; and the reason it has been so much admired in every age, is, because our souls are essences from the very source of beauty, harmony, and perfection."

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Aristotle defines beauty "order in grandeur;" order involving symmetry; and grandeur uniting simplicity and majesty. Father André defined it "variety reduced to unity by symmetry and harmony." One description of theorists, however, maintain, that beauty is nothing but illusion; having no more positive existence, than colour. As well may we assert, that the nerves are conductors of electric fluids; that all matter is representative; or that all virtue is illusive; as to doubt the existence of beauty and deformity. Beauty, "bear witness earth and heaven!" by being the result of association", is not the less positive on that account. For every object, which

a In association we may trace the Linda of the Spaniard; the Buona Roba of the Italian; and the je ne sais quoi of the French. Were it otherwise, beauty never could be understood; for in Africa a black complexion is indispensable; the Arabs of the desert esteem large dark eyes; the Chinese and Peruvians, small eyes and small feet; the Ladrones, black teeth and white hair; the Turks, red hair, dark eyelashes, and rose-coloured nails: while the Greenlanders paint their faces blue, and not unfrequently blue and yellow. The Moors of Senegal regard beauty and corpulence as synonymous terms; the Indians of Louisiana depress the foreheads of infants to make them more comely; in many parts of the East a large head is esteemed a great beauty; the Japanese admire " and the Javanese a golden" hair; golden complexion and a Circassian, to be exquisitely beautiful to a Persian, must have a small nose and mouth, white teeth, dark hair, large black antelope eyes, and a delicate figure.

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awakens pleasure in the mind, is beautiful; since it possesses some internal or external quality, which produces the sensation of pleasure. Whatever excites agreeable emotion, therefore, possesses some intrinsic quality of beauty. Hence the term beauty may be applied to every thing, which gives serenity or pleasure to the mind; from a woman to a problem; from a planet to a flower. Hence arises the intimate connexion between beauty and virtue ; falsehood can dwell in the soul of the lovely," says the Celtic proverb; and as nothing produces so many agreeable emotions, as the practice of virtue, whatever is virtuous, or conducive thereto, is really and essentially as beautiful as a carnation always in bloom, or the group of angels in the Assumption of Guido.

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In the true spirit of this doctrine, Wieland, the celebrated German poet,-who was so fond of solitude, that he used, as he confesses in a letter to a friend, to spend whole days and summer nights in his garden, feeling and describing the beauties of Nature,—has written a dialogue, conceived in the manner, and executed with much of the sweetness and delicacy of Plato. He imagines Socrates to surprise Timoclea, a captivating Athenian virgin, at her toilet; dressed for a solemn festival in honour of Diana; attired in all the beauty of Nature and in all the luxuriance of art. His surprising her, in this manner, gave rise to a dialogue, in which the subject of real and apparent beauty is philosophically discussed. The arguments are summed up by Timoclea, at the end of the discourse; in which she declares herself a convert to that fine moral doctrine, which teaches, that nothing is beautiful, which is not good and nothing good, but what is, at the same time, intrinsically beautiful. This union of virtue, happiness, and beauty, is in strict conformity to the doctrines of the ancient Platonists, and the evidence of experience. For, as affinity acts upon bodies in contact, and gravitation upon bodies at immeasurable distances, so virtue, partaking of the nature of both, has the power of combining all minds, rightly disposed,

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