PRELIMINARY ESSAY,
BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR.
| Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear: **** Death hath no power yet upon thy beauty— Thou art not conquered; beauty’s ensign yet Is crimson on thy lips, and in thy cheeks.—Shakspeare. |
It maybe set down, we suppose, as a matter sufficiently settled to become a principle, that men are moved by nothing more generally and certainly than by the power of Beauty—particularly Beauty in Woman. That it has an influence upon all of one sex, like that which Master Shakspeare has given picture of in the lines we have set upon our front, we would not pretend to say: but that the wild bard was no freshman in his knowledge of humanity so far as heart and mind matters were concerned, we feel safe to assert—and feel confident that the passionate language of Romeo trespasses no bounds, and is but a faithful declaration of a power that rules with a milder or a mightier sway in the bosoms of all who answer to the distinctive name of Man.
This may seem a wide assertion. But it is no less true. The reason of the slow belief in this universality is, that men are not always subject to the influence, while the principle of it is always a tenant within them. There is a time—and with the time comes the development. The mind, as it unfolds, becomes acquainted with nothing so calculated to excite its wonder, as its own properties and capabilities—its new perceptions—its new affections. Till progress brings with it this knowledge of ourselves, we remain ignorant of half that is within us to affect us like a spell, and within whose reach we have been unconsciously passing onward and upward, by a Providential ordering, from our childhood at least, if not from our cradles.
Keeping this in view, let us consider for a moment something of the elements of Beauty, and their influence, as a principle, upon the principles of our nature.—And first it must be admitted that they are good—of a good origin—and tend to a good result. They are good elements, we believe, for we find them almost ever associated with what is pleasing, improving, and satisfactory to us. Indeed, in this connexion, we find them a source of consolation and delight, where all else has failed to minister or even suggest them. They are of a good origin—for, if they were not, no such effect would be wrought upon a system so sadly prone to evil and villanous principles, and so little open to pure, and elevating, and comforting ones, that they may be said to come about it, most emphatically, like “angel-visits.” They are elements, again, that tend to a good result, in their operation, for their consequences are almost ever, to make men better satisfied with their condition—where they come in, as an influence upon it, at all—better satisfied with almost everything about them, so long as they are conscious they are creatures of proportions and proprieties, and affected intrinsically by them.
If what we here set down respecting the elements of Beauty be true, it is certainly of an interesting importance in view of the influence of that quality upon the principles of our nature. We call it quality. Perhaps this is not name enough for something so peculiar and powerful in its connexion with the total of our spirits. We will term it such, however, for want of a wider language—and leave men to feel out such definition as they may deem more good and grateful.
Implanted, then, so deeply as Beauty is in the human heart—so universal, that millions bow to it as something to fear while they worship—so certain, as a principle, that scarcely a human being can be said to walk without the sphere of its influence—it would be needless as well as unphilosophical to deny that the great object of its fixture—its enthronement upon its high place, should be one of no common character, or of a tendency and effect within us, which it would be wrong and inexcusable to overlook.