existing in the human mind; while the latter operates in the production of ideal combinations of its own creation, altogether independent of any immediate impression made upon the senses. The beauty of a flower, for example, or of a dew-drop, depends on certain combinations of form and colour, manifestly referable to definite and systematic, though it may be unrecognised, laws; but when Oberon, in “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” is made to exclaim— “And that same dew, which sometimes on the buds Was wont to swell, like round and orient pearls, Stood now within the pretty floweret’s eyes, Like tears that did their own disgrace bewail,”— the poet introduces a new element of beauty equally legitimate, yet altogether distinct from, although accompanying that which constitutes the more precise science of æsthetics as here defined. The composition of the rhythm is an operation of the understanding, but the beauty of the poetic fancy is an operation of the imagination. Our physical and mental powers, æsthetically considered, may therefore be classed under three heads, in their relation to the fine arts, viz., the receptive, the perceptive, and the conceptive. The senses of hearing and seeing are respectively, in the degree of their physical power, receptive of impressions made upon them, and of these impressions the sensorium, in the degree of its mental power, is perceptive. This perception enables the mind to form a judgment whereby it appreciates the nature and quality of the impression originally made on the receptive organ. The mode of this operation is intuitive, and the quickness and accuracy with which the nature and quality of the impression is apprehended, will be in the degree of the intellectual vigour of the mind by which it is perceived. Thus we are, by the cultivation of these intuitive faculties, enabled to decide with accuracy as to harmony or discord, proportion or deformity, and assign sound reasons for our judgment in matters of taste. But mental conception is the intuitive power of constructing original ideas from these materials; for after the receptive power has acted, the perception operates in establishing facts, and then the judgment is formed upon these operations by the reasoning powers, which lead, in their turn, to the creations of the imagination. The power of forming these creations is the true characteristic of genius, and determines the point at which art is placed beyond all determinable canons,—at which, indeed, æsthetics give place to metaphysics.