of a doubt, furnish the operator with the finest and best of plates, but a great many persons do not use them because they are a little difficult to clean, and they themselves too lazy to use the necessary quantity of elbow grease; they prefer the French plates as they are easier to clean and moreover are a little cheaper, but unfortunately these plates are generally full of small holes. For my own use I prefer the Scoville plates to all others. The case in which the pictures are to be enclosed, should also be of the very best description, more particularly the glass, as this last named article displays the picture to great advantage. Operators, generally, do not put up their work in cases as good as they should be, nor can the manufacturers make them as cheap as they wish them. If the community would make up their minds to refuse such pictures as are put up in common paper cases with thin, bad glass, there would be fewer daguerreotypes destroyed of persons whom their friends respect which, as frequently happens, cannot be replaced, owing to the false working of cheap materials.

One of the best and most extensive case making establishments now known, is that of E. Anthony, of New York. In this manufactory the best cases are all furnished with the finest glass I have met with.

Fourth. It is an important consideration in daguerreotyping to be provided with chemicals of the very best description, as nothing is more annoying to the operator than an inferior order of materials. The purest and the best should at all times be used, for to the excellence of our chemical agents are we indebted for the fine tone of the pictures we take. There are many establishments in this country celebrated for the care with which they put up the chemicals used in the business of daguerreotyping, but I believe none are better or purer than those prepared by Louis Beckers, of Philadelphia. In nine years experience I have not found a bad article from his manufactory.

And lastly; to succeed in this as in any other business, you must pay strict attention to it and never trust to chance but be ready at all times to operate, have every thing in order and when a sitter comes to have his likeness taken, go to work regardless of the weather, be prepared for all kinds of weather, and let me tell you some of the best pictures are frequently taken in wet and cloudy weather. Be very particular how you pose your sitters, as the painters term the position they give to the subject; let them always assume the easiest and most natural position possible, for on this, in a great measure, depends the beauty of the daguerreotype, and, never for one moment think of letting a picture leave your gallery that has no shadow or out-line to the features, as such productions, although they may please some sitters because copied from themselves, yet they will reflect no credit on either the art or the artist. In a future paper I will give a description of Daguerreotyping simplified.

ON THE MORAL ADVANTAGES OF ESTHETIC

MANNERS.

FROM THE GERMAN OF SCHILLER.

The author of the article On the Danger of Esthetic Manners, in the eleventh part of the "Horen" of the year 1795, has justly doubted a morality, whose foundation is based merely on the feeling of beauty, and has Taste alone for its security. But an active and pure feeling for beauty has clearly the happiest influence on the moral life, and of this I would here treat.

When I acknowledge the merit due to Taste in contributing to the progress of morality, I must not be misunderstood to mean that the part, which good taste assumes in an action, can make this action a moral one. Morality can have nothing but itself for its foundation. Taste may favor the morality of behavior, as I hope to prove in the present essay, but it can never produce any thing moral by its own influence.

The case with the inner and moral freedom, is here quite the same as with the outward physical. I act freely in the latter sense only then, when I follow my will independent of every foreign influence. But in order to obtain the possibility of following my own will unconfined, I am yet at last obliged to be sustained by a foundation different from myself, as soon as it is acknowledged, that the latter has power to restrain my will. So also I may at last be obliged to be sustained by a foundation different from my Reason, in order to obtain the possibility of acting with propriety, as soon as this latter is considered as a power, which is able to restrain the freedom of the disposition of my mind. As one may very truly say that a man obtains freedom from another, although freedom itself consists therein that one is exempt from direction by others; so, also, one may say with as much propriety, that taste assists in obtaining virtue, although virtue clearly produces itself; so that with it one needs no foreign assistance.

An action does not therefore cease to be called free, because such an one, who is able to restrain it, sustains himself quietly, as soon as we only know that the acting person therein followed merely his own will, without regard for any foreign. So, also, an inner action does not therefore loose the predicate of moral, because, fortunately, the temptations are wanting which might have made it retrogressive, as soon as we only acknowledge, that the acting person therein follows merely the expression of his reason with the exclusion of foreign motives. The freedom of an outward action rests merely on its immediate origin from the will of the person, the morality of an inward action merely on the immediate determination of the will by the law of Reason.

It may be harder or easier to act as a freeman, according as we

rush upon powers, which work against our freedom and which must be subdued. Accordingly there is a degree of freedom. Our freedom is greater, more manifest at least, when we maintain it in case of extraordinary opposition from hostile powers; but it does. not therefore cease, when our will finds no opposition, or when a foreign force interposes and destroys this opposition without our assistance.

This is the case also with morality. It may cost us a greater or less struggle, to obey Reason immediately, according as impulses, which oppose its commands and which we must resist, stir themselves within us. Accordingly there is a degree of morality. Our morality is greater, more conspicuous at least, when we obey Reason immediately, in spite of the strongest impulses to the contrary; but it does not therefore cease, when no incitement to the contrary is discovered, or when some other power, than our own power of will, enfeebles this incitement. Enough, we act with moral proprie ty, as soon as we only therefore so act, because it is moral, and without first asking ourselves, whether it is also agreeable; even supposing there was really a probability that we would act otherwise, if it occasioned us pain, or deprived us of a pleasure.

To the honor of human nature let it be acknowledged, that no man can sink so low, as to prefer evil merely because it is evil, but that every one, without exception, would prefer the good, because it is good, were it not for the fact that casually it excluded the agreeable, or was attended with the disagreeable. All immorality actually appears to spring out of the collision of the Good with the Agreeable, or what is all the same, the collision of Reason with Passion, and to have for its source on the one side the strength of the sensual impulses, on the other side the weakness of the moral power of will.

Morality may therefore be promoted in two different ways, as it may be hindered in two different ways; either one must strengthen the part of Reason and the power of good will, so that no temptation may prevail over him, or one must break the power of temptation, so that thereby the weaker reason and the weaker good will may be superior to temptation.

Indeed, it might appear as if morality itself gained nothing by the last experiment, because the will, whose quality alone makes an action moral, undergoes thereby no alteration. But that is not necessary, in the assumed case, where no bad will, which should be changed, only a good one, which is weak, is presupposed. And this weak good will, in this way, arrives at an effect which, perhaps, would not happen, if it had been counteracted by stronger impulses. But where a good will is the foundation of an action, there is, in truth, living morality. I do not hesitate to assume the position, that that truly promotes morality, which destroys the opposition of inclination against the Good.

The natural internal adversary of morality is the sensual impulse,

which struggles for satisfaction, as soon as an object is presented before it, and sets itself in opposition to the order of Reason, as soon as Reason commands anything repugnant to its inclination. This sensual impulse is continually busy, endeavoring to interest the will in its favor, which still stands under the moral law and feels bound under the obligation, that it will never contradict the declarations of Reason.

But the sensual impulse knows no moral law and is determined to realize its object through the will, whatever Reason may say. This tendency of our appetitive faculty to command the will immediately, and without the least regard to the higher laws, stands in conflict with our moral destination, and is the strongest adversary, which man has to contend against in his moral action. Persons of unchastened disposition-of-mind, who are deficient at the same time in moral and aesthetic culture, give loose reins immediately to Passion, and they act merely as their senses desire. Persons of moral disposition-of-mind, but who are deficient in æsthetic culture, give the reins immediately to Reason, and it is merely by their glance of duty, that they overcome temptation. In æsthetically refined souls there is still one resort more, which, not unfrequently, makes amends for virtue where it fails, and alleviates it where it exists. This resort is Taste.

Taste demands temperance and propriety, it abominates every thing angular, hard and violent, and inclines towards all those things which join themselves together easily and harmoniously. That we, even in the storm of sensibility, may listen to the voice of Reason, and establish a boundary to the rude sallies of nature, it is necessary to be familiar with the good ton, which is nothing else than an æsthetic law for every polished man.

This constraint, by which the polished man subdues the expression of his feeling, obtains for him a degree of dominion over this feeling itself,-gains for him at least a facility to interrupt the merely passive condition of his soul by an act of spontaneity, and to restrain by reflection the rapid transition of feelings into action. But all that, which breaks the blind power of Passion, produces not the least virtue (for this must always be its own work), but it gives an opportunity to the will to turn to virtue. But this victory of Taste over unchastened Passion, is very far from being a moral action, and the freedom which the will here gains by Taste, is very far from being a moral freedom. Taste frees the disposition-ofthe-mind from the yoke of instincts, only so far as it leads it into its own fetters, and while it disarms the first and manifest enemy of morality, yet it remains itself not unfrequently as the second, which under the mask of a friend may be thereby only more dangerous. Taste, for example, controls the disposition-of-the-mind even merely by the charm of pleasure-a noble pleasure, it is true, because its source is Reason-but where pleasure determines the will, there is no living morality.

But yet something extraordinary is gained by this intermingling of taste with the exercise of the will. Each and every material inclination and unchastened Passion which often so sternly and violently oppose the practice of Goodness, are by Taste banished from the disposition-of-the-mind, and in their place nobler and gentler inclinations are cultivated, which tend towards order, harmony and perfection, and although they are no virtues themselves, yet they share an object with virtue. When now, therefore, Passion speaks, it must undergo a strict review before the sense of beauty, and when again Reason commands actions of order, harmony and perfection, it then finds not only no opposition but, rather the liveliest consent from the side of inclination. When for example, we run through the different forms, under which morality may be manifested, then might we be able to trace it all back to these two. Either sensuality makes a motion in the disposition-of-the-mind that something shall take place, or be prevented, and thereupon the will disposes of it according to the law of Reason, or the Reason makes the motion, and the will obeys it, without questioning the senses.

The Grecian Princess Anna Komnena relates an incident of an imprisoned rebel, whom her father Alexius, when he was General of his predecessor, had been ordered to escort to Constantinople. On the way, as they traveled together alone, Alexius was overcome with a longing to halt under the shadow of a tree, and to refresh himself there from the heat of the sun. Sleep soon overpowered him. The prisoner, to whom the fear of approaching death allowed no repose, remained awake. While Alexius was lying in deep sleep, the prisoner discovered his sword, which was hanging on the twig of a tree, and was tempted to set himself at liberty by murdering his guard. Anna Komnena intimates that she did not know, what would have happened, if Alexius had not fortunately awaked.

Here, now was a moral acting principle of the first order, where the sensual impulse first was actuated, and only afterwards was Reason recognized as judge. Had that man conquered temptation out of pure regard for justice, then there would be no doubt that he acted morally.

As the late Duke of Brunswick was walking on the banks of the rapid Oder, thinking whether he should abandon himself to the raging stream endangering his life, that thereby an unfortunate man might be saved, who was helpless without him, and as he-I place this case singly on the consciousness of this duty-sprang in the boat, on which no other one would enter, there is also no one who would deny that he acted morally. The Duke's position here was opposite to the former case. Here the representation of duty preceded, and only afterwards the impulse of self-preservation began to contend against the order of Reason. But in both cases the will sustained itself in the same way: it followed Reason immediately, therefore both are moral.