On Patriotism.-A Fragment. PATRIOTISM, in modern times and in great States, is and must be the creature of reason and reflection, rather than the offspring of physical or local attachment. "Our country "is a complex, abstract existence, recognised only by the understanding. It is an immense riddle, containing numberless modifications of reason and prejudice, of thought and passion. Patriotism is not, in a strict or exclusive sense, a natural or personal affection, but a law of our rational and moral nature, strengthened and determined by particular circumstances and associations, lated from the English, which will eminently support what I have advanced. The principal one among this selection is the celebrated 'Beggar's Opera' of Gay, which has had such an amazing run in England. We are here in the very worst company imaginable; the dramatis personæ are robbers, pickpockets, gaolers, prostitutes, and the like; yet we are highly amused and in no haste to quit them. And why? Because there is nothing in the world more original or more natural. There is no occasion to compare our most celebrated comic operas with this, to see how far we are removed from truth and nature; and this is the reason that, notwithstanding our wit, we are almost always flat and insipid. Two faults are generally committed by our writers, which they seem incapable of avoiding they think they have done wonders if they have only faithfully copied the dictionaries of the personages they bring upon the stage, forgetting that the great art is to choose the moments of character and passion in those who are to speak, since it is those moments alone that render them interesting. For want of this discrimination, the piece necessarily sinks into insipidity and monotony. Why do almost all M. Vade's pieces fatigue the audience to death? Because all his characters speak the same languagebecause each is a perfect resemblance of the other. Instead of this, in the 'Beggar's Opera,' among eight or ten girls of the town, each has her separate character, her peculiar traits, her peculiar modes of expression, which give her a marked distinction from her companions."-Vul. i. p. 185. but not born of them nor wholly nourished by them. It is not possible that we should have an individual attachment to sixteen millions of men any more than to sixty millions. We cannot be habitually attached to places we never saw and people we never heard of. Is not the name of Englishman a general term as well as that of man? How many varieties does it not combine within it? Are the opposite extremities of the globe our native place because they are a part of that geographical and political denomination 'our country'? Does natural affection expand in circles of latitude and longitude? What personal or instinctive sympathy has the English peasant with the African slave-driver or East Indian nabob? Some of our wretched bunglers in metaphysics would fain persuade us to discard all general humanity and all sense of abstract justice, as a violation of natural affection, and yet do not see that the love of our country itself is in the list of our general affections. The common notions of patriotism are transmitted down to us from the savage tribes, where the fate and condition of all was the same, or from the States of Greece and Rome, where the country of the citizen was the town in which he was born. Where this is no longer the case-where our country is no longer contained within the narrow circle of the same wallswhere we can no longer behold its glimmering horizon from the top of .our native mountains-beyond these limits it is not a natural but an artificial idea, and our love of it either a deliberate dictate of reason or a cant term. It was said by an acute observer and eloquent writer (Rousseau) that the love of mankind was nothing but the love of justice; the same might be said with considerable truth of the love of our country. It is little more than another name for the love of liberty, of independence, of peace, and social happiness. We do not say that other indirect and collateral circumstances 1 do not go to the superstructure of this sentiment (as language, literature, manners, national customs), but this is the broad and firm basis. No. XIX. On Beauty. It is about sixty years ago that Sir Joshua Reynolds, in three papers which he wrote in the Idler,' advanced the notion-which has prevailed very much ever since that Beauty was entirely dependent on custom, or on the conformity of objects to a given standard. Now we could never persuade ourselves that custom, or the association of ideas, though a very powerful, was the only principle of the preference which the mind gives/ to certain objects over others. Novelty is surely one source of pleasure; otherwise we cannot account for the well-known epigram, beginning— "Two happy things in marriage are allowed," &c. Nor can we help thinking that, besides custom, or the conformity of certain objects to others of the same general class, there is also a certain conformity of objects to themselves-a symmetry of parts, a principle of proportion, gradation, harmony-call it what you will-which makes certain things naturally pleasing or beautiful, and the want of it the contrary. We will not pretend to define what Beauty is, after so many learned authors have failed; but we shall attempt to give some examples of what constitutes it-to show that it is in some way inherent in the object, and that if custom is a second nature, there is another nature which He who speaks two languages has no country. The French, when they made their language the common language of the Courts of Europe, gained more than by all their subsequent conquests. ranks before it. Indeed, the idea that all pleasure and pain depend on the association of ideas is manifestly absurd; there must be something in itself pleasurable or painful before it could become possible for the feelings of pleasure or pain to be transferred by association from one object to another. Regular features are generally accounted handsome; but regular features are those the outlines of which answer most nearly to each other, or undergo the fewest abrupt changes. We shall attempt to explain this idea by a reference to the Greek and African face, the first of which is beautiful because it is made up of lines (corresponding with or melting into each other; the last is not so, because it is made up almost entirely of contradictory lines and sharp angular projections. The general principle of the difference between the two heads is this: the forehead of the Greek is square and upright, and, as it were, overhangs the rest of the face, except the nose, which is a continuation of it almost in an even line. In the Negro or African the tip of the nose is the most projecting part of the face; and from that point the features retreat back, both upwards towards the forehead and downwards to the chin, This last form is an approximation to the shape of the head of the animal, as the former bears the strongest stamp of humanity. The Grecian nose is regular, the African irregular ; in other words, the Grecian nose seen in profile forms nearly a straight line with the forehead, and falls into the upper lip by two curves, which balance one another; seen in front, the two sides are nearly parallel to each other, and the nostrils and lower part form regular curves answering to one another and to the contours of the mouth. On the contrary, the African pug-nose is more like an ace of clubs." Whichever way you look at it, it presents the appearance of a triangle. It is narrow and drawn to a point at top, broad and flat at bottom. The point is peaked, and recedes abruptly to the level of the forehead or the mouth, and the nostrils are as if they were drawn up with hooks towards each other. All the lines cross each other at sharp angles. The forehead of the Greeks is flat and square till it is rounded at the temples; the African forehead, like the ape's, falls back towards the top and spreads out at the sides, so as to form an angle with the cheekbones. The eyebrows of the Greeks are either straight, so as to sustain the lower part of the tablet of the forehead, or gently arched, so as to form the outer circle of the curves of the eyelids. The form of the eyes gives all the appearance of orbs-full, swelling, and involved within each other. The African eyes are flat, narrow at the corners, in the shape of a tortoise; and the eyebrows fly off slantwise to the sides of the forehead. The idea of the superiority of the Greek face in this respect is admirably expressed in Spenser's description of Belphœbe: "Her ivory forehead, full of bounty brave, * The head of the girl in the Transfiguration '—which Raphael took from the 'Niobe '—has the same correspondence and exquisite involution of the outline of the forehead, the eyebrows, and the eyes (circle within circle) which we here speak of. Every part of that delightful head is blended together, and every sharp projection moulded and softened down with the feeling of a sculptor, or as if nothing should be left to offend |