_The utility of Beauty an incidental Circumstance._--The truth is, that while the beautiful does elevate and ennoble the mind, and thus furnish the means of the highest æsthetic and moral culture, this advantage is wholly incidental to the existence of beauty, not even a necessary or invariable effect, much less the constituting element. This is not the reason why we admire the beautiful. It does not enter into our thoughts at the moment. As on the summit of Rhigi, I watch the play of the first rosy light on the snowy peaks that lift themselves in stately grandeur along the opposite horizon, I am not thinking, at that moment, of the effect produced on my own mind, by the spectacle before me; I am wholly absorbed in the magnificence of the scene itself. It is beautiful, not because it is useful, not because it elevates my mind, and cultivates my taste, and contributes, in various ways, to my development, but it produces these effects because it is beautiful. The very thought of the useful is almost enough, in such cases, to extinguish the sentiment of the beautiful. _Beauty cannot be appropriated._--That only is useful which can be _appropriated_, and turned to account. But the beautiful, in its very nature, cannot be appropriated or possessed. You may appropriate the picture, the statue, the mountain, the waterfall, but not their beauty. These do not belong to you, and never can. They are the property of every beholder. Hence, as Jouffroy has well observed, the possession of a beautiful object never fully satisfies. The beauty is ideal, and cannot be possessed. It is an ethereal spirit that floats away as a silver cloud, ever near, yet ever beyond your grasp. It is a bow, spanning the blue arch, many-colored, wonderful; yonder, just yonder, is its base, where the rosy light seems to hover over the wood, and touch gently the earth; but you cannot, by any flight or speed of travel, come up with it. It is here, there, everywhere, except where you are. It is given you to behold, not to possess it.