Who can imagine a miser, even, to say nothing of a thief, or a drunkard, lifting his eyes from his buried heaps, and enjoying the scene before him, however beautiful? While he who performs a deed of charity at the end of his walk, will find nature wearing a richer dress on his return. The mind conscious of rectitude is at peace with itself, and is in that calm state which permits it to enjoy whatever is pleasing.
But not only, as in the cases now mentioned, is a right state of moral feeling favorable to taste, but the emotions of taste also tend to introduce moral ideas and emotions. It is, as I conceive, chiefly from this fact that nature has a tendency to lead the mind "up to nature's God;" for we must all be conscious that when we view nature as beautiful or sublime, this tendency is strongest. No one can have stood by Niagara, or upon the White Mountains, without feeling this. Hence the groves and the high hills were the first places of worship. Hence the Indian sacrifices to the Great Spirit when he passes through the wild rapids. And as we associate the beauties of nature with the wisdom and goodness of God, so do we, in many cases, instinctively infer from the displays of taste in man, something of his moral character. Who, for example, in travelling through a solitary forest, if he should come, as there are many such, to a neat log-house, with a trellised woodbine at the door, and with every thing orderly and clean about it, would not expect to pass by unmolested, or, if he should call, to be civilly and kindly treated?—whereas, if every thing bore the appearance of filth and dilapidation, and the only signs of taste were those which indicated a taste for rum, he might well quicken his pace for fear he should be waylaid. No one expects to find indications of taste about the dwelling of a drunkard, or of one abandoned to any low vice. I appeal to any one who hears me, whether he has not felt that it was an indication of a good moral character, and an encouragement to charity, when he has entered some poor dwelling and found that there was still kept alive, in the midst of poverty, a susceptibility to the emotions, and a regard to the requisitions of taste.
I have just observed, that there is an affinity between correct moral feeling and the emotions of taste. I now observe, that the highest pleasures of taste cannot be enjoyed without correct views on great moral subjects, and especially respecting the being and attributes of God. Whatever may be said of the power of material objects, in themselves considered, to produce the emotions of taste, it is certain that their chief power depends on the conceptions of the mind which they awaken as signs. A single instance will illustrate this. Most of us have probably felt the emotion of sublimity on hearing what we supposed to be distant thunder, which vanished, and perhaps seemed ridiculous, the moment we ascertained that the sound was produced by the rumbling of a cart. In this case, it is obvious that the emotion depended, not on the sound itself, but on the conception of the mind awakened by it. Now this is pre-eminently the case in the works of nature. How different must be the emotions awakened by a view of the evening firmament in the mind of him who should suppose the stars to be mere points of light, set at no great distance above him, and moving around the earth solely for the convenience of man, from those awakened in the mind of him to whom those points of light indicate the existence of an infinite space; and of suns, and worlds, and systems without number, and at distances which cause the wing of the strongest imagination to flag! How different the emotions produced by the comet now, as it returns at its predicted period, from those excited as it fired
| "the length of Ophiucus huge In the Arctic sky, and, from his horrid hair," |
was supposed to shake "pestilence and war!" As, therefore, he who cannot see beyond the stars as they appear to the sense, must lose by far the highest pleasure which they are adapted as objects of taste to give; so he who knows the physical structure of the universe, and who yet does not see in it, and behind it, an infinite and beneficent Intelligence, cannot have connected with his view those conceptions which awaken the highest emotions of beauty and sublimity.
The relations of man to nature are much less intimate than those of God, and yet our emotions in view of nature are greatly modified by the view which we take of His dignity and moral character. It was when Hamlet supposed there was foul corruption and a general want of principle in society, that "this goodly frame, the earth," seemed to him but "a steril promontory;" "this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament," why, it appeared no other thing to him "than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors." It was when her inhabitants were oppressed and degraded, that the natural beauty, which is still as bright as ever on the shores of Greece, seemed in the eye of the poet but as
We must all have felt that a shade of sadness was cast over the face of nature when we have thought of the passions, and wars, and lust, and rapine of man, in connexion with her quiet scenes. On the other hand, were the moral state of the world what we trust it shall one day be,—did universal purity, and goodness, and love reign,—would not the sun seem to shine with a more benignant radiance; instead of the thorn, would there not come up the fir-tree: would not the mountains and hills break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field clap their hands?
And if the emotions of taste are thus modified by our views of man, how much more must they be by those respecting God! How must a blank atheism hang the heavens in sackcloth, and cover the earth with a pall, and turn the mute promisings of nature into a mockery, and make of her mighty fabric one great charnel-house of death, without the hope of a resurrection! On the other hand, how must the beauty and sublimity of nature and of the universe be heightened, the moment we perceive them in their connexion with God! Nothing is more common than to hear those, who emerge from that practical atheism in which most men live, speak of the new perceptions of beauty and sublimity with which they look upon the works of nature:—