I mean that beauty which is demonstrable truth, and that truth which is demonstrable beauty. _Exactitude. Completion. The just medium. The satisfactory rest of the mind. Perfection_. A point, indeed, in which the mind cannot rest! It must go forward or backward. If the latter, it relapses into the dominion of error; if the former, if assumes the charms of _design_, or _intention_. The artist, arrived at the ultimate limit of rules, or demonstrable truth, stands, as it were, between the visible and invisible world; between that of sense and intellect; the common and the uncommon; and his productions will be a conjunction of both. He looks back through all the variety of common nature, and reviews, through the medium of truth and beauty, the various objects it exhibits; and on its spotless ground, i.e. the abstract idea of nature without defects, can only exist in idea, he arranges those objects, objects, so as they may best produce the effects he aims at in his art. He does not attempt to obliterate any character in the common circle of nature; but, following her own oeconomy, he endeavours, by juxtaposition, &c. to make each subservient to each in creating delight, and giving beauty to the _whole_. But, to descend from the abstract general idea to the particular idea of beauty, or idea of a particular form: We discard every thing, that is not beauty, to compose beauty; but every thing that is not beauty is not therefore deformity. The wrong we see in each individual we do not call deformity: when it is so, it stands on the limit of the common circle, in opposition to beauty. From common form seem to originate beauty and deformity; and, as they recede from each other in opposite directions, they become less and less like their parent, _common form_, but never totally unlike; for it is their likeness to that form that constitutes the one beauty, and the other deformity; for, were there no resemblance in deformity to the common form, it would be a different species, and no longer disgust; and none in beauty, it would no longer please. There is no particular common form, but which, to create beauty, an artist, who studies the perfection of the human form, must improve in some, if not in every part; to effect which, considered as mere form only, rules will suffice, but, considered as grace, it must express a sentiment that no rules can give! That all feel the same sentiment of admiration for that which they think the most perfect, however the objects may differ, has induced some to believe that beauty is an arbitrary idea, and that it exists only in the imagination! But does it follow, that, because it is not possible for the savage or the man of taste to judge of any object but as experience enables him to judge, that therefore there is no preeminence in that form which is beauty to the one above that which is beauty to the other?