Page:OntheConductofMantoInferiorAnimals.pdf/36

 prepared for battle, we cry, what a scarecrow! A cock-fighter, however, with all the ideas of the pit about him, will conceive, that in this latter state, he is in his greatest beauty; and if his picture be drawn, it must be drawn in this ridiculous manner. I have often seen it.

Let jockies, and stable-boys, and cock-fighters, keep their own absurd ideas, but let not men, who pretend to see and think for themselves, adopt such ridiculous conceits. In arts, we judge by the rules of art. In nature, we have no criterion but the forms of nature. We criticise a building by the rules of architecture; but in judging of a tree, or a mountain, we judge by the most beautiful forms of each, which nature hath given us. It is thus in other things. From nature alone we have the form of a horse. Should we then seek forbeauty in that object, in our own wild conceptions, or recur to the great original from whence we had it? We may be assured, that nature's forms are always the most beautiful; and therefore we should endeavour to correct our ideas by her's. If, however, we cannot give up the point, let us at least be consistent. If we admire a horse without a tail, or a cock without feathers, let us not laugh at the Chinese for admiring the disproportioned foot of his mistress; or at the Indian, for doting on her black teeth, and tattooed cheeks. For myself, I cannot conceive, why it should make a horse more beautiful to take his tail from him, than it would be to clap a tail, as an addition of beauty, to a man. The accidental motion also of the tail gives it peculiar grace; both when the horse moves it himself, and when it waves in the wind. The beauty of it, to an unprejudiced eye, is conspicuous at once; and in all parade, and state-horses, it is