ment than the taste; but every person of
good taste, must have also a good judgment in matters of taste:
sometimes the judgment may have been partially exercised upon a
particular class of objects, and its accuracy of discrimination may be
confined to this one subject; therefore we hastily decide, that,
because men of taste may not always be men of universally good
judgment, these two powers of the mind are unnecessary to one another.
By teaching the philosophy, at the same time that we cultivate the
pleasures, of taste, we shall open to our pupils a new world; we shall
give them a new sense. The pleasure of every effect will be increased
by the perception of its cause; the magic of the scenery will not lose
its power to charm, though we are aware of the secret of the
enchantment.
We have hitherto spoken of the taste for what is beautiful; a taste
for the sublime we should be cautious in cultivating. Obscurity and
terror are two of the grand sources of the sublime; analyze the
feeling, examine accurately the object which creates the emotion, and
you dissipate the illusion, you annihilate the pleasure.
"What seemed its head, the likeness of a kingly crown had on."
The indistinctness of the head and of the kingly crown, makes this a
sublime image. Upon the same principle,
"Danger, whose limbs, of giant mould,
No mortal eye can fix'd behold,"
always must appear sublime as long as the passion of fear operates.
Would it not, however, be imprudent in education to permit that early
propensity to superstitious terrors, and that temporary suspension of
the reasoning faculties, which are often essential to our taste for
the sublime? When we hear of "Margaret's grimly ghost," or of the
"dead still hour of night," a sort of awful tremor seizes us, partly
from the effect of early associations, and partly from the solemn tone
of the reader. The early associations which we perhaps have formed of
terror, with the ideas of apparitions, and winding sheets, and sable
shrouds, should be unknown to children. The silent solemn hour of
midnight, should not to them be an hour of terror. In the following
poetic description of the beldam telling dreadful stories to her
infant audience, we hear only of the pleasures of the imagination; we
do not recollect how dearly these pleasures must be purchased by their
votaries:
"* * * * * * finally by night
The village matron, round the blazing hearth,
Suspends the
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