then approach very nearly to insipidity, but still without destroying beauty; on the contrary, such a form, when irradiated by a mind of equal sweetness and purity, united with sensibility, has something angelic; and seems further removed from what is earthly and material. This shews how much softness, smoothness, and delicacy, even when carried to an extreme degree, are congenial to beauty on the other hand, it must be owned, that where the only agreement between such a form and the soul which inhabits it, is want of character and animation, nothing can be more completely vapid than the whole composition.

If we now return to the same point at which we began, and conceive the eyebrows more strongly marked; the hair tougher in its effect and quality; the complexion more dusky and gypsy-like; the skin of a coarser grain, with some moles on it; a degree of cast in the eyes, but so slight, as only to give archness and peculiarity of countenance this, without altering the proportion of the features, would

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take off from beauty, what it gave to character and picturesqueness. If we go one step farther, and increase the eyebrows to a preposterous size; the cast into a squint; make the skin scarred, and deeply pitted with the small-pox; the complexion full of spots; and increase the moles into excrescences-it will plainly appear how close the connection is between beauty and insipidity, and between picturesqueness and deformity, and what "thin partitions do their bounds divide."

The whole of this applies most exactly to improvements. The general features of a place remain the same; the accompaniments only are changed, but with them its character. If the improver, as it usually happens, attend solely to verdure, smoothness, undulation of ground, and flowing lines, the whole will be insipid. If the opposite, and much rarer taste should prevail; should an improver, by way of being picturesque, make broken ground, pits, and quarries all about his place; encourage nothing but furze, briars, and thistles; heap quantities of rude stones on his banks; or,

to crown all, like Mr. Kent, plant dead trees *-the deformity of such a place would, I believe, be very generally allowed, though the insipidity of the other might not be so readily confessed.

I may here remark, that though picturesqueness and deformity are by their etymology so strictly confined to the sense of seeing, yet there is in the other senses a most exact resemblance to their effects; this is the case, not only in that of hearing, of which so many examples have been given, but in the more contracted senses of tasting and smelling; and the progress I have mentioned, is in them also equally plain and obvious. It can hardly be doubted, that what answers to the beautiful in the sense of tasting, has smoothness and sweetness for its basis, with such a degree of stimulus as enlivens, but does not overbalance those qualities; such, for instance, as in the most delicious fruits and liquors. Take away the stimulus, they become insipid; increase it so as to over

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*Vide Mr. Walpole's Essay on Modern Gardening.

balance those qualities, they then gain peculiarity of flavour, are eagerly sought after by those who have acquired a relish for them, but are less adapted to the general palate. This corresponds exactly with the picturesque; but if the stimulus be encreased beyond that point, none but depraved and vitiated palates will endure, what would be so justly termed deformity in objects of sight*. The sense of smelling has in this, as in all other respects, the closest conformity to that of tasting.

These are the chief arguments that have occurred to me, for giving to the picturesque a distinct character. I have had

*The old maxim of the schools, de gustibus non est disputandum, is by many extended to all tastes, and claimed as a sort of privilege not to have any of their's called in question. It is certainly very reasonable, that a man should be allowed to indulge his eye, as well as his palate, in his own way; but if he happened to have a taste for water-gruel without salt, he should not force it upon his guests as the perfection of cookery; or burn their insides, if, like the king of Prussia, he loved nothing but what was spiced enough to turn a living man into a mummy.

the satisfaction of finding many persons high in the public estimation, of my sentiment; and among them, some of the most eminent artists, both professors and dilettanti. On the other hand, I must allow, that there are persons whose opinion carries great weight with it, who in reality hold the two words beautiful and picturesque, to be synonymous, though they do not say so in express terms: with those, however, I do not mean to argue at present, though well prepared for battle. Others there are, who allow, indeed, that the words have a different meaning, but deny that there is any distinct character of the picturesque; to those, before I close this part of my esI shall offer a few reflections.

say,

Taking it then for granted that the two terms are not synonymous, the word picturesque, must have some appropriate meaning; and therefore, when any person any person chooses to call a figure or a scene picturesque, rather than beautiful, he must have some reason for that choice. The definitions which have been given of picturesque, ap