This leads me to observe, that it is not only the change of vegetation which gives to autumn it's golden hue, but also the atmosphere itself, and the lights and shadows which then prevail. Spring has its light and flitting clouds, with shadows equally flitting and uncertain; refreshing showers, with gay and genial bursts of sunshine, that seem suddenly to call forth and to nourish the young buds and flowers. In autumn all is matured; and the rich hues of the ripened fruits, and of the changing foliage, are rendered still richer by the warm haze, which, on a fine day in that season, spreads the last varnish over every part of the picture. In winter, the trees and woods, from their total loss of foliage, have so lifeless and meagre an appearance, so different from the freshness of spring, the fulness of summer, and the richness of autumn, that many, not insensible to the beauties of scenery at other times, scarcely look at it during that season. But the contracted circle which the sun then describes, however unwished for

on every other consideration, is of great advantage with respect to breadth; for then, even the mid-day lights and shadows, from their horizontal direction, are so striking, and the parts so finely illuminated, and yet so connected and filled up by them, that I have many times forgotten the nakedness of the trees, from admiration of the general masses. In summer, the exact reverse is as often the case; the rich cloathing of the parts makes a faint impression, from the vague and general glare of light without shadow.

CHAPTER IX.

I HAVE endeavoured to the best of my abilities, and according to the observations I have made in a long habit of reflection on the subject, to trace the ideas we have of the picturesque, through the different works of art and nature: and it appears to me, that in all objects of sight, in buildings, trees, water, ground, in the human species, and in other animals, the same general principles uniformly prevail; and that even light and shadow, and colours, have the strongest conformity to

those principles. I have compared both its causes and effects, with those of the sublime and the beautiful; I have shewn its distinctness from them both, and in what that distinctness consists.

·I may perhaps, however, be able to throw some additional light on the subject, by considering two qualities the most opposite to beauty-those of ugliness and deformity; by shewing in what points they differ from each other, and under what circumstances they may form a union with other qualities and characters. According to Mr. Burke, those objects are the ugliest, which approach most nearly to angular*; but I think he would scarcely have given that opinion, if he had thought it worth while to investigate so ungrateful a subject as that of ugliness, with the same attention as that of beauty for if his position be true, the leaves of the plane-tree and the vine, are among the ugliest of the vegetable kingdom, It seems to me, that mere unmixed ug

• Sublime and Beautiful, page 217.

liness does not arise from sharp angles, or from any sudden variation; but rather from that want of form, that unshapen lumpish appearance, which, perhaps, no one word exactly expresses; a quality (if what is negative may be so called) which never can be mistaken for beauty, never can adorn it, and which is equally unconnected with the sublime, and the picturesque. The remains of Grecian sculpture afford us the most generally acknowledged models of beauty of form, in its most exquisitely finished state; if this be granted, every change that could be made in such models, must be a diminution of the perfect character of beauty, and an approach towards some other. Were an artist, for instance, to model, in any soft material, a head from the Venus or the Apollo, and then by way of experiment to make the nose longer or sharper; rising more suddenly towards the middle; or strongly aquiline; were he to give a striking projection to the eye-brow, or to interrupt by some marked deviation the flowing outline of the face,-though he