furnished of people who have enthufiaftically, and with force, propagated those opinions, which fome time before they refifted with their blood. Rarely have ever great changes in opinion taken place without the application of force, more or lefs. Like every thing elfe in human life and human affairs, it is not univerfally true, that a perfecution of opinions leffens or increases the number of their votaries. In finding where it may or may not have gathered thefe effects, the fagacity of government fhines or is difgraced, as well as in the time, the manner, the choice of the opinions on which it ought to use or forbear the fword of domeftic or of foreign juftice. But it is a false maxim, that opinions ought to be indifferent to us, either as men or as a ftate. Opinion is the rudder of human action; and as the opinion is wise or foolish, vicious or moral, the cause of action is noxious or falutary. It has even been the great primary object of fpeculative and doctrinal philofophy to regulate opinion. It is the great object of political philofophy to promote that which is found; and to extirpate what is mifchievous, and which directly tends to render men bad citizens in the community, and mischievous neighbours out of it. Opinions are of infinite confequence. They make the manners— in fact, they make the laws: they make the legislator. They are, therefore, of all things, thofe to which provident government ought to look moft to in their beginnings. After a time they may look to them invain. When, therefore, I am told that a war is a war of opinions, I am told that it is the most important of all wars.

Here I must not be told that this would lead to eternal war and perfecution. It would certainly, if we argued like metaphyficians run mad, who do not correct prudence, the queen of virtues, to be any virtue at all, and would either throw the bridle on the neck of headlong nature, or tie it up for ever to the poft. No fophiftry-no chicane here. Govern

ment is not to refine men out of innocent and moral liberty by forced inferences, drawn by a torturing logic; or to fuffer them to go down hill the highway that leads directly to every crime and every vice.→ Regicide Peace.

ORDER.

A particular order of things may be altered; order itfelf cannot lofe its value. Letter to a Noble Lord.

OBSCURITY.

To make any thing very terrible, obfcurity feems in general to be neceffary. When we know the full extent of any danger, when we can accuftom our eyes to it, a great deal of the apprehension vanishes. Every one will be fenfible of this, who confiders how greatly night adds to our dread, in all cafes of danger, and how much the notions of ghofts and goblins, of which none can form clear ideas, affect minds which give credit to the popular tales concerning fuch forts of beings. Thofe defpotic governments, which are founded on the paffions of men, and principally upon the paffion of fear, keep their chief as much as may be from the public eye. The policy has been the fame in many cafes of religion. Almoft all the heathen temples were dark. Even in the barbarous temples of the Americans at this day, they keep their idol in a dark part of the hut, which is confecrated to his worship. For this purpose too the Druids performed all their ceremonies in the bofom of the darkest woods, and in the fhade of the oldest and most spreading oak. No person seems better to have understood the fecret of heightening, or of setting terrible things, if I may use the expreffion, in their strongest light, by the force of a judicious obfcurity, than Milton. His defcription of death in

the fecond book is admirably studied; it is astonishing with what a gloomy pomp, with what a fignificant and expreffive uncertainty of ftrokes and colouring, he has finished the portrait of the king of terrors:

The other hape,

If fhape it might be call'd that shape had none
Diftinguishable, in member, joint, or limb;
Or fubftance might be call'd that fhadow feem'd,
For each feem'd either; black he flood as night;
Fierce as ten furies; terrible as hell;

And hook a deadly dart. What feem'd his head
The likeness of a kingly crown had on.

In this description all is dark, uncertain, confused, terrible, and fublime to the laft degree.Sublime and Beautiful.

PROPORTION AND BEAUTY.

LET US fee whether proportion can in any fenfe be confidered as the cause of beauty, as hath been so generally, and by fome fo confidently affirmed. If proportion be one of the conftituents of beauty, it must derive that power either from fome natural properties inherent in certain measures, which operate mechanically; from the operation of custom; or from the fitnefs which fome meafures have to answer fome particular ends of conveniency. Our bufinefs therefore is to enquire, whether the parts of those objects, which are found beautiful in the vegetable or animal kingdoms, are conftantly fo formed according to fuch certain measures, as may ferve to fatisfy us that their beauty refults from those measures on the principle of a natural mechanical caufe; or from custom; or, in fine, from their fitnefs for any determinate purposes. I intend to examine this point under each of these heads in their order. But before I proceed further, I hope it will not be thought amifs, if I lay down the rules which governed me in

this enquiry, and which have mifled me in it, if I have gone aftray. 1. If two bodies produce the fame or a fimilar effect on the mind, and on examination they are found to agree in fome of their properties, and to differ in others; the common effect is to be attributed to the properties in which they agree, and not to those in which they differ.

2. Not to account for the effect of a natural object from the effect of an artificial object. 3. Not to account for the effect of any natural object from a conclufion of our reafon concerning its ufes, if a nátural cause may be affigned. 4. Not to admit any determinate quantity, or any relation of quantity, as the cause of a certain effect, if the effect is produced by different or oppofite meafures and relations; or if thefe meafures and relations may exift, and yet the effect may not be produced. These are the rules which I have chiefly followed, whilft I examined into the power of proportion confidered as a natural caufe; and thefe, if he thinks them juft, I request the reader to carry with him throughout the following difcuffion; whilft we enquire in the first place, in what things we find this quality of beauty; next, to see whether in thefe we can find any affignable proportions, in fuch a manner as ought to convince us that our idea of beauty refults from them. We fhall confider this pleafing power, as it appears in vegetables, in the inferior animals, and in man. Turning our eyes to the vegetable creation, we find nothing there fo beautiful as flowers; but flowers are almost of every fort of fhape, and of every fort of difpofition; they are turned and fashioned into an infinite variety of forms; and from thefe forms botanifts have given them their names, which are almost as various. What proportion do we difcover between the ftalks and the leaves of flowers, or between the leaves and the piftils? How does the flender ftalk of the rofe agree with the bulky head under which it bends? but the rofe is a beautiful flower; and can we undertako

!

to say that it does not owe a great deal of its beauty even to that difproportion? the rofe is a large flower, yet it grows upon a small fhrub; the flower of the apple is very small, and grows upon a large tree; yet the rofe and the apple bloffom are both beautiful, and the plants that bear them are moft engagingly attired, notwithstanding this difproportion. What by general confent is allowed to be a more beautiful object than an orange tree, flourishing at once with its leaves, its bloffoms, and its fruit? but it is in vain that we fearch here for any proportion between the height, the breadth, or any thing elfe concerning the dimenfions of the whole, or concerning the relation of the particular parts to each other. I grant that we may obferve in many flowers, fomething of a regular figure, and of a methodical difpofition of the leaves. The rofe has fuch a figure and fuch a difpofition of its petals; but in an oblique view, when this figure is in a good measure loft, and the order of the leaves confounded, it yet retains its beauty; the rofe is even more beautiful before it is full blown; and the bud, before this exact figure is formed; and this is not the only inftance wherein method and exactnefs, the foul of proportion, are found rather prejudicial than ferviceable to the caufe of beauty. -Sublime and Beautiful.

PARLIAMENT, (SEE VOTE.)

Qualities, favourable and unfavourable to obtain a Seat in Parliament in popular Elections.

A STRENUOUS refiftance to every appearance of lawlefs power; a fpirit of independence carried to fome degree of enthufiafm; an inquifitive character to discover, and a bold one to display, every corruption and every error of government; these are the qualities which recommend a man to a feat ́in the house of commons, in open and merely popular elections. An indolent and fubmiffive difpofition;