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101 remarkably the impressions we receive from the sense of touch. Even in taste it is unmistakable. In taste, also, there are different gradations of satisfaction, which, as it were, long to be resolved, and disappear, after the solution, in a series of diminishing vibrations. This influence may be least noticeable, perhaps, in the sense of smell. Now, as in the sensitive man it is the progress of sensation, its degree, its ranging increase and decrease, its pure and perfect harmony, which chiefly engage us, and indeed are more really attractive than the substance itself (forgetting, as we do, that the nature of the substance mainly determines the degree, and still more, the harmony of the progression); and further, as the sensitive man, like the image of spring teeming with blossoms, is the spectacle which is above all others the most fascinating; so also, in the fine arts, it is this image of his sensations which man especially strives to discover. And thus it is that painting and sculpture appropriate it to themselves. The eye of Guido Reni's Madonna is not confined in its expression to the limits of a single, fleeting glance. The tense and straining muscles of the Borghisian Gladiator foretell the blow he is about to deal. In a still higher degree does poetry employ this image. And, to make my idea clearer, without wishing to direct especial attention to the comparative excellence of the fine arts, I would observe that they exercise their influence in two ways, and while these are shared by each, we find them combined in very different manner. They immediately convey ideas, or they excite sensations, thus attuning the soul to an internal harmony, and enriching and exalting its powers. Now, in proportion as one of these sources of influence borrows aid from the other, it weakens the force of its own peculiar impression. Poetry unites both in the highest degree, and it is therefore, in this respect, the most erfect of all the fine arts; but when we regard it in