rises far above all merely human excellence. This can never palliate the folly, which seizes upon the casket, and throws the pearl away. If a man were to stand before an earthly judge, awaiting from his lips the sentence of acquittal, or of death, how strange would be the delusion, were he chiefly employed in admiring the elegance and neatness of those expressions, on which his fate depended! But what is that to the fatuity of the learned dreamer, who devotes his days and nights to critical discussions of the mere letter of the Scripture; and, at the same time, remains in stupid apathy as to the terrors of its judgments, and the promises of its mercy-who is perfectly careless whether he himself is to go upwards to that heaven, or downwards to that hell, which are equally acceptable to him, provided they are sublimely and poetically described?

XII. ON THE FINAL CAUSE OF THE PLEASURE
DERIVED FROM WORKS OF IMITATION.

In order to our enjoyment of happiness in the life to come, there must, manifestly, be a suitableness of our tastes and tendencies, to the change we are to undergo, and the scenes in which we are to live. This requires no proof: it is self-evident.

If, then, it be true, that the heavens and earth which now appear, are, however darkly shadowed out, the counterparts of the new heavens and new earth, which will be the future residence of the blessed; we may reasonably suppose, that there are, in the human mind, fitnesses for, and predispositions towards, that kind of enjoyment which would naturally result from this correspondence between the two systems.

Now, such a tendency is, I think, discoverable in the following instance. It has been often asked, whence is derived, or how are we to account for, the peculiar pleasure, which the mind experiences from excellence in the imitative arts -in seeing, for example, the different parts of a painting, which stand out in bold relief, while life and nature are starting from the canvass? That the pleasure is not necessarily connected with the perception of beauty, is clear from this, that it is equally felt, where the object described is grotesque or monstrous.

It has been, however, said, that our chief gratification is derived from witnessing the triumph of the artist's skill, or from what some French writer has called the difficulté surmontée. But that this is not the true solution will, I think, appear evident, from two considerations. 1. Because in many works of consummate ingenuity,

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will accept his mercies, pleasu degree what eye hath seen, or ear hath entered into the heart of man to a That, amongst other enjoyments, will be the recognition of all the objects which we earth, in brighter exhibition than before! That we shall again behold all that is pure and lovely in this present world, the fields of nature, and those forms and countenances which we looked on with so much tenderness here below, transfigured into brighter existence, and shining forth in their celestial counterparts!

XIII. THE CHARACTERS OF THE JEHOVAH OF THE JEWS, AND THE LORD JESUS CHRIST, COMPARED.

It has struck me very forcibly of late, that a new and luminous body of evidence to the divinity

and where the triumph over difficulties is just as great, (in the construction of nice and complicated machinery, for instance,) no pleasure of the kind is experienced at all. 2. Because this notion is falsified by the fact, that were the effects which we most admire in imitation, produced, not by art, but by accident or nature, the pleasure would be increased, and not diminished. If, walking in some stony desert, we found a rock cast, by the sportive hand of nature, into the form, and exhibiting all the divisions and compartments, of a commodious house; or if, amidst the scenes of vegetable life, we discovered a plant answering, in every lineament, to the form and figure of a man; or if, in some strange land, we suddenly came in view of a village or rural landscape, which answered in every the minutest feature, so as to be the exact counterpart of some well-known scene which we had left behind: I ask, whether, in all these cases, a peculiar pleasure, nay, a degree of transport, would not be felt, wholly independent of the excitement of having discovered something merely strange and marvellous in itself, such as any lusus naturæ, or sport of fortune, might chance to be?

No: the sense which such exhibitions would call forth, is a pleasure sui generis, and no less than a distinct passion of the soul; namely, that