most essential difference in the operations and qualities of music and painting, is the superior degree in which the one is indebted to the influence of imitation above the other. Without doubt, a great portion of the delight we experience in the contemplation of a well-executed picture, arises from the consideration of the skill of the artist displayed in the closeness of the imitation. But the particular laws of music do not admit, in any degree, of the artifices of imitation; and too close a resemblance between sounds and the passion or object described, is indecorous, if not trifling and ridiculous. This, however, is a negative difference, and not a positive and specific contrariety between the two arts.

"If we were to pursue still further our inquiries into this delicate connection that subsists between music and painting, or any or all of the finer arts, we should fall upon a great many more pleasing discoveries of a similar nature. We should find that the beautiful and sublime in the one, are the beautiful and sublime in the other; allowing for those differences which arise from accidental circumstances, from their external organization and mechanical procedure. In the objects which exercise the sense of seeing, beauty of figure may be resolved into uniformity, variety, and proportion: uniformity, because it produces facility of conception, and enables the whole to enter easily into the mind; variety, because it gratifies the appetite for novelty, and puts the mind. into action by a transition from one contemplation to another; proportion, because it gratifies our moral sense of fitness and utility. Beauty in music results nearly from the same causes; that is, it addresses itself to the same seated principles of the mind. It is here that a variety in the parts and tones under the same key, that is, a particular variety subordinate to

So far indeed these objectors may be right, that, considered as a matter of mere sensation, as that faculty by which instant and immediate pleasure is received from beauty, taste has no absolute criterion. We cannot apply to it any standard, till we regard it as a matter of discernment, as related to the brightest and purest capacities of the soul, as consisting not of an organical impulse, but in the reflex operations of the mind."

This is all I can recollect of our traveller's discourse on this delicate and difficult subject, to which I know my readers are welcome, if they can discover any thing pleasing or new in the argument. It was natural for this exertion of my memory to put all my thoughts into motion on the subject; and it is my intention to publish the result in a future paper, if I can remember the progeny of my own mind, as well as that of my travelled friend.

portant facts, and a perfect developement of national character and manners; but we are content, in the livelier conduct of the Tour, with detached observations, broken incidents, and occasional hints. We expect from the one a structure complete in every part; we require from the other the materials for erecting one, with a few scattered directions for their use and management. But we are by no means satisfied if the quantity only of these materials be sufficient for our present purpose; their quality must also be excellent; they must be well chosen, easy of application, substantial, solid, and consistent. In other words, though the relation may be broken and unconnected, the facts should all unite in their tendencies and conclusions, should enable the mind of the reader to make up a perfect whole, and to arrive at some general judgement from the proofs they unite in displaying. Much impertinence and absurdity do frequently grow out of this indulgence extended to the writers of Tours. Standing in the same relation to the author of Travels, as the publisher of Memoirs to the Historian, like them they often assume the graver carriage of their superiors; and enlarge with unbecoming prolixity on circumstances which have taken possession of their fancies and affections; while they hasten to compensate for this trespass on their reader's patience, by a rapidity not less blameable in the relation of other facts of equal importance: thus endeavouring to repay the fatigue they have occasioned us in one place, by disappointing our expectations in another.

Man, under the severe discipline of philosophy, learns indeed to subdue his desires, and to controul his feelings: he learns to look upon life with apathy, and to rear a sullen satisfaction on a basis of scorn. He is led by a string of maxims, and is forging fetters for himself, while he triumphs in the freedom he is gaining he is frittering away the best part of his nature, while he thinks he is only reasoning down his passions and his prejudices. But Christianity knows the value of all the energies of our minds too well to destroy them; and, instead of petrifying them into torpid stillness, gives them a kinder action and benigner impulse, by directing them towards objects on which they cannot be too much exerted-on objects which irritate and inflame by no disappointments, which inspire complacency while they exercise the feelings, which purify our enjoyment while they dilate our capacities of pleasure, and which cool the ardours without refrigerating the system of life, or damping the charities of the heart.

It is by reasoning on those principles which Christianity has promulged, that our eyes are so strengthened as to pierce the veil of opulence and splendor, to separate truth from appearance, and grandeur from greatness, till we look back upon our own littleness with secret exultation. We learn from the same source, that were our sight still farther strengthened, could we contemplate the circumstances of life with those eyes with which we probably may regard them from our place of observation in another state, in what an inverted order the objects of our contemplation would present themselves! Greatness sunk into the squalidest ranks of infamy, and poverty shining in robes of purple! a new race of shepher kings; and princesses again drawing water from well, as in the days of Homer!

My greatest quarrel with discontentedness is on the account of its base submission to the dictates and decrees of other men. We are in general dissatisfied with our lot, not because we feel it to be uneasy, but because we think it appears so to others. Any particular distress, or specific ground of sorrow, I separate from the character of discontentedness, which implies a habit of repining, built on a general comparison of our own condition with that of other men: and this is a quality so much the more contemptible, as it is not the genuine offspring of our own minds, not the legitimate result of our natural reason, but the bastard issue of vulgar ignorance, adopted by pride, and fostered by envy. I have ever, in my passage through life, consulted the frame of my mind; and balancing it against my exterior circumstances, have found them equal to the rate of ability 1 possess, and have been content.

It is with individuals as it is with society; that state is the happiest to man, in his collective character, in which he can best exercise his natural capacity for improvement—a state of society, fitted to draw out the social energies of his mind, adapted to his local wants, and suited to his physical character and complexion. So, in his individual capacity, that state is really the most eligible which is best calculated to foster his good inclinations, and to turn his talents to account; that which is most proportioned to the reach of his mind, and which exacts nothing beyond the promise of his intellect-in a word, which produces that harmony and equilibrium, that mutual action between the external and internal condition of the man, without which we must expect eccentricities and anomalies of conduct, and at the best an unsteady course of morality, and irregular fruits of virtue. With such a rule and measure to direct us,