VINE JUSTICE.

Sec. 1. Symmetry, what and how found in organic nature.

Sec. 2. How necessary in art.

We shall not be long detained by the consideration of this, the fourth
constituent of beauty, as its nature is universally felt and understood.
In all perfectly beautiful objects, there is found the opposition of one
part to another and a reciprocal balance obtained; in animals the
balance being commonly between opposite sides, (note the
disagreeableness occasioned by the exception in flat fish, having the
eyes on one side of the head,) but in vegetables the opposition is less
distinct, as in the boughs on opposite sides of trees, and the leaves
and sprays on each side of the boughs, and in dead matter less perfect
still, often amounting only to a certain tendency towards a balance, as
in the opposite sides of valleys and alternate windings of streams. In
things in which perfect symmetry is from their nature impossible or
improper, a balance must be at least in some measure expressed before
they can be beheld with pleasure. Hence the necessity of what artists
require as opposing lines or masses in composition, the propriety of
which, as well as their value, depends chiefly on their inartificial and
natural invention. Absolute equality is not required, still less
absolute similarity. A mass of subdued color may be balanced by a point
of a powerful one, and a long and latent line overpowered by a short and
conspicuous one. The only error against which it is necessary to guard
the reader with respect to symmetry, is the confounding it with
proportion, though it seems strange that the two terms could ever have
been used as synonymous. Symmetry is the _opposition_ of _equal_
quantities to each other. Proportion the _connection_ of _unequal_
quantities with each other. The property of a tree in sending out equal
boughs on opposite sides is symmetrical. Its sending out shorter and
smaller towards the top, proportional. In the human face its balance
of opposite sides is symmetry, its division upwards, proportion.

[Illustration: TOMB OF THE ILARIA DI CARETTO, LUCCA. From a photograph.]

Sec. 3. To what its agreeableness is referable. Various instances.

Sec. 4. Especially in religious art.

Whether the agreeableness of symmetry be in any way referable to its
expression of the Aristotelian [Greek: isotes], that is to say of
abstract justice, I leave the reader to determine; I only assert
respecting it, that it is nec