One class of men would tell us that the Beautiful is that which is agreeable to the senses of sight and hearing. They would admire, in painting, the delineation of naked flesh, luxuriant as it glows upon the canvas of Vandyke and Rubens; in statuary, they would seek voluptuous and sensual positions; while in music, they would love that which titillates the ear, which lulls them into an indolent yet delicious languor. Such men are the dwellers in the halls of Circean senses; they can appreciate only the sensuous. The poets of this class are very numerous. They never rise to those general ideas which are found in the universal consciousness, but are forever occupied with fugitive thoughts, passing as the hour in which they are born. They delight in representing the _accidental_, the exceptional, the peculiar, the fashion, mode, or exaggeration of the flying hour. They never sing of the high and tender feelings which pervade the human heart; of the joys and sorrows of the soul in its mystic relations with God, its sympathetic affections with humanity; but delight in describing furtive sensations, passing impressions, individual and subjective bliss and woe. Never daring to grapple with the sublime yet tender simplicity of nature, they sport with eccentricity, delight in fantastically related ideas, revel in surprises, in sudden and unforeseen developments. Their style is full of individualities and mannerisms, ornaments and intricacies; the _coloring_ is always worth more than the _form_, the sensation than the idea. Their heroes and heroines are grotesque beings, sentimental caricatures, souls not to be comprehended, always placed in unnatural situations, and surrounded with dark, gloomy, and impenetrable mysteries. If their readers can be made to exclaim at every page: 'Inconceivable! astonishing! original!' they consider their work perfect. Such poets seldom attempt long poems; if they should imprudently do so, we find but little sequence, and nothing of that clear order, of that marvellous _unity_, which mark the works of the masters. Everything is sought to flatter that pretentious vanity of the limited understanding which piques itself on its stereotyped knowledge, always striving to usurp the higher empire of the divining soul. Such writing certainly requires subtlety of intellect, for talent is required to discover that which no one can see; to invent relations where none exist. We may, indeed, often observe great perfection in the details, high finish in the execution, keen intellect in the analysis; but nothing in the thoughts which appeals to the universal heart. Brilliant pictures succeed to brilliant pictures, decoration to decoration, but there is an utter want of essential unity. Absorbed in the sensuous gorgeousness of highly colored details, if they can but glue together startling and overwrought images, they are satisfied, even while neglecting the principal idea. They seize everything by the outside; nothing by the heart.