the painted wings of butterflies and beetles, the rich colours and spotted lustre of many tribes of insects.

There are parts also of animals ornamental, and the properties by which they are so, not subservient, that we know of, to any other purpose. The irides of most animals are very beautiful, without conducing at all, by their beauty, to the perfection of vision; and nature could in no part have employed her pencil to so much advantage, because no part presents itself so conspicuously to the observer, or communicates so great an effect to the whole aspect,

In plants, especially in the flowers of plants, the principle of beauty holds a still more considerable place in their composition; is still more confessed than in animals, Why, for one instance out of a thousand, does the corolla of the tulip, when advanced to its size and maturity, change its colour? The purposes, so far as we can see, of vegetable nutrition, might have been carried on as well by its continuing green. Or, if this could not be, consistently with the progress of veget

able life, why break into such a variety of colours? This is no proper effect of age, or of declension in the ascent of the sap; for that, like the autumnal teints, would have produced

one colour on one leaf, with marks of fading and withering. It seems a lame account to call it, as it has been called, a disease of the plant. Is it not more probable, that this property, which is independent, as it should seem, of the wants and utilities of the plant, was calculated for beauty, intended for display?

A ground, I know, of objection, has been taken against the whole topic of argument, namely, that there is no such thing as beauty at all; in other words, that whatever is useful and familiar, comes of course to be thought beautiful; and that things appear to be so, only by their alliance with these qualities. Our idea of beauty is capable of being in so great a degree modified by habit, by fashion, by the experience of advantage or pleasure, and by associations arising out of that experience, that a question has been made, whether it be not altogether generated by these causes, or would have any proper ex istence without them. It seems, however, a carrying of the conclusion too far, to deny the existence of the principle, viz. a native capacity of perceiving beauty, on account of an influence, or of varieties proceeding from that influence, to which it is subject, seeing that principles the most acknowledged, are

liable to be affected in the same manner. I

should rather argue thus. spects objects of sight.

The question re

Now every other

sense hath its distinction of agreeable and disagreeable. Some tastes offend the palate, others gratify it. In brutes and insects, this distinction is stronger and more regular than in man. Every horse, ox, sheep, swine, when at liberty to choose, and when in a natural state, that is, when not vitiated by habits forced upon it, eats and rejects the same plants. Many insects which feed upon particular plants, will rather die than change their appropriate leaf. All this looks like a determination in the sense.itself to particular tastes. In like manner, smells affect the nose with sensations pleasurable or disgusting. Some sounds, or compositions of sound, delight the ear; others torture it. Habit can do much in all these cases (and it is well for us that it can; for it is this which repower conciles us to many necessities): but has the distinction, in the mean time, of agreeable and disagreeable, no foundation in the sense itself? What is true of the other senses, is most probably true of the eye (the analogy is irresistible), viz. that there belongs to it an original constitution, fitted to receive pleasure from some impressions, and pain from others.

I do not however know, that the argument which alleges beauty as a final cause, rests this concession. We possess a sense upon of beauty, however we come by it. It in fact exists. Things are not indifferent to this sense; all objects do not suit it; many, which we see, are agreeable to it; many others disagreeable. It is certainly not the effect of habit upon the particular object, because the most agreeable objects are often the most rare; many, which are very common, continue to be offensive. If they be made supportable by habit, it is all which habit can do they never become agreeable. If this sense, therefore, be acquired, it is a result; the produce of numerous and compli cated actions of external objects upon the senses, and of the mind upon its sensations. With this result, there must be a certain congruity to enable any particular object to please: and that congruity, we contend, is consulted in the aspect which is given to animal and vegetable bodies.

IV. The skin and covering of animals is that upon which their appearance chiefly de pends, and it is that part which, perhaps, in all animals is most decorated, and most free from impurities. But were beauty, or agreeableness of aspect, entirely out of the ques

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tion, there is another purpose answered by this integument, and by the collocation of the parts of the body beneath it, which is of still greater importance; and that purpose is concealment. Were it possible to view through the skin the mechanism of our bodies, the sight would frighten us out of our wits. "Durst we make a single movement," asks a lively French writer, “ or stir a step from the place we were in, if we saw our blood circulating, the tendons pulling, the lungs blowing, the humours filtrating, and all the incomprehensible assemblage of fibres, tubes, pumps, valves, currents, pivots, which sustain an existence at once so frail, and so presumptuous?”

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V. Of animal bodies, considered as masses, there is another property, more curious than it is generally thought to be; which is the faculty of standing and it is more remarkable in two-legged animals than in quadrupeds, and, most of all, as being the tallest, and resting upon the smallest base, in man. There is more, I think, in the matter than we are aware of. The statue of a man, placed loosely upon its pedestal, would not be secure of standing half an hour. You are obliged to fix its feet to the block by bolts and solder; or the first shake, the first gust