would destroy beauty, yet he might create character; and something grand or picturesque, might be produced by such a trial. But let him take the contrary method, let him clog and fill up all those nicely marked variations of which beauty is the result, ugliness, and that only must be the consequence. Should he proceed still further with his experiment, should he twist the mouth, make the nose awry, of a preposterous size, and place warts and carbuncles upon it, or wens and excrescencies on other parts of the face, he would then graft deformity upon ugliness.

Deformity is to ugliness, what picturesqueness is to beauty; though distinct from it, and in many cases arising from opposite causes, it is often mistaken for it, often accompanies it, and greatly heightens its effect. Ugliness alone, is merely disagreeable; by the addition of deformity, it becomes hideous; by that of terror it may become sublime. All these are mixed in the

Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum. Deformity in itself, however, has no con

nection with the sublime; and when terror can be produced by circumstances of a more elevated character, may even injure it's effect. Death, for instance, is commonly painted as a skeleton; but Milton, in his famous description, has made no allusion to that deformity (if it may be called so) which is usual in the representation of the king of terrors; possibly from judging that its distinctness would take off from that mysterious uncertainty, which has rendered his picture so awfully sublime.

The other shape,

If shape it might be called, which shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb;

Or substance might be called, which shadow seem'd,
For each seem'd either; black it stood as night,

Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,

And shook a deadly dart; what seem'd his head,
The likeness of a kingly crown had on.

The union of deformity with beauty, is, from the contrast, more striking than any other; but it is in the same proportion disgusting and so far from raising any grand ideas, has rather a tendency to excite those that are ludicrous. Such I think it ap

pears in the description of Scylla in the Metamorphoses, and of Sin in Paradise

Lost.

As deformity consists of some striking and unnatural deviation from what is usual in the shape of the face or body, or of a similar addition to it, all lines, of whatever description they may be, will equally produce it. Mr. Burke's opinion of flowing lines as producing beauty, and of angular lines as producing ugliness, has been mentioned; and those who are of his way of thinking, must probably object to the Grecian nose as too straight, and as forming too sharp an angle with the rest of the face. Whether the Greek artists were right or not, their practice shews, that, in their opinion, straight lines, and what nearly approach to angles, were not merely compatible with beauty, but that the effect of the whole would thence be more attractive, than by a continual sweep and flow of outline in every part*.

* The application of this to modern gardening is too obvious to be enforced. It is the highest of all authority against

The symmetry and proportion of hills and mountains, are not marked out and ascertained like those of the human figure; but the general principles of beauty and ugliness, of picturesqueness and deformity, are easily to be traced in them, though not in so striking and obvious a manner.

Those hills and mountains which nearly approach to angles, are often called beautiful; seldom, I believe, ugly: and when their size and colour are diminished and softened by distance, they accord with the softest and most pleasing scenes, and compose the distance of some of Claude's most polished landscapes. The ugliest forms of hills, if my ideas be just, are those which are lumpish, and, as it were, unformed; such, for instance, as from one of the ugliest and most shapeless animals are called pigbacked. When the summits of any of these are notched into paltry divisions, or have such insignificant risings upon them as appear like knobs or bumps; continued flow of outline, even where beauty of form is the only object.

or when any improver has imitated those knobs or knotches, by means of patches and clumps, they are then both ugly and deformed.

The ugliest ground is that which has neither the beauty of smoothness, verdure, and gentle undulation, nor the picturesqueness of bold and sudden breaks, and varied tints of soil: of such kind is ground that has been disturbed, and left in that unfinished state; as in a rough ploughed field run to sward. shores of a flat tide river, or the sides of a mountain stream in summer, composed merely of loose stones, uniformly continued, without any mould or vegetation. The steep shores of rivers, where the tide rises at times to a great height, and leaves promontories of slime; and those on which torrents among the mountains leave huge shapeless heaps of stones, may certainly lay claim to some mixture of deformity; which is often mistaken for another character. Nothing, indeed, is more common than to hear persons who come from a

Such also are the slimy

VOL. I.