vanity might perhaps lead her to mistake the motive*.

As the excess of those qualities which chiefly constitute beauty, produces insipidity; so likewise the excess of those which constitute picturesqueness, produces deformity. These mutual relations may be sufficiently obvious in inanimate objects; yet perhaps they will be more clearly perceived, if we consider them in the human countenance, supposing the general form of the countenance to remain the same, and only what may in some measure be consi dered as the accompaniments to be changed.

Suppose then, what is no uncommon style or degree of beauty, a woman with fine features, but the character of whose

* A celebrated anatomist is said to have declared, that he had received in his life more pleasure from dead, than from living women. This might perhaps be brought as a similar, though a stronger instance of perverted taste; but I never heard of any painter's having made the same declaration with respect to age and youth. Whatever may be the future refinements of painting and anatomy, I believe young and live women, will never have reason to be jealous of old, or dead rivals.

eyes, eyebrows, hair, and complexion, are more striking and, showy than delicate : imagine then the same features, with the eyebrows less marked, and both those, and the hair of the head, of a softer texture; the general glow of complexion changed to a more delicate gradation of white and red; the skin more smooth and even, and the eyes of a milder colour and expression: you would by this change take off from the striking, the showy effect; but such a face would have, in a greater degree, that finished delicacy, which even those who might prefer the showy style, would allow to be more in unison with the idea of beauty; and the other would appear comparatively coarse and unfinished.. If we go on still further, and suppose hardly any mark of eyebrow; the hair, from the lightness of its colour, and from the silky softness of its quality, giving scarce any idea of roughness; the complexion of a pure, and almost transparent whiteness, with hardly a tinge of red; the eyes of the mildest blue, and the expression equally mild, you would

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 rougher 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

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

Vide Mr. Walpole's Essay on Modern Gardening.