"How much more beautiful," he says, "is the rose-tree when its buds begin to blow, than afterward, when its flowers are full and in their greatest perfection! yet, in this first situation, its form has much less winding surface, and is much more composed of straight lines and of angles, than afterward when the weight of the flower weighs down the feeble branches, and describes the easiest and most varied curves."--But he answers himself by adding: "The circumstance of its youth, a circumstance in all cases so affecting, the delicacy of its blossom, so well expressed by the care which Nature has taken in surrounding the opening bud with leaves, prevail so much upon our imagination, that we behold the form itself with more delight in this situation than afterward, when it assumes the more general form of delicacy." "There are few things in the vegetable world," he says, "more beautiful than the knotted and angular stem of the balsam, merely from its singular transparency, which it is impossible to look at without a strong impression of the fineness and delicacy of the vegetable."--But it is its transparency, not its angularity, that is beautiful. The beauty of color is not less conspicuous than that of form in this class of beings. SECTION III. ELEMENTS OF BEAUTY IN THINKING BEINGS. I have next to show that, in thinking beings, while the characters of inanimate, and those of living beauty, are still more or less continued, new characteristics are also added to them. I. In animals, accordingly, the bones bear a close analogy to the wood of plants. They generally assume the same rounded form; but, as thinking beings are necessarily moving ones, their bones are hollow to combine lightness with strength, and they are separated by joints to permit flexion and extension. II. As animals, like plants, grow and reproduce, a portion of their general organization, their vascular system, which serves the purpose of growth and reproduction, consists, like plants, of trunks, branches, &c.; and the surface of their bodies, the skin, is formed by a tissue of these vessels. Accordingly, both the vessels themselves, and the tissue which they form, present the delicacy, the bending, the variety, and the contrast, which are the characters of the preceding species of beauty.