nclusion.

There remain, however, two points to be noticed before I can hope that
this conclusion will be frankly accepted by the reader. If it be the
moral part of us to which beauty addresses itself, how does it happen,
it will be asked, that it is ever found in the works of impious men, and
how is it possible for such to desire or conceive it?

On the other hand, how does it happen that men in high state of moral
culture are often insensible to the influence of material beauty, and
insist feebly upon it as an instrument of soul culture.

These two objections I shall endeavor briefly to answer, not that they
can be satisfactorily treated without that detailed examination of the
whole body of great works of art, on which I purpose to enter in the
following volume. For the right determination of these two questions is
indeed the whole end and aim of my labor, (and if it could be here
accomplished, I should bestow no effort farther,) namely, the proving
that no supreme power of art can be attained by impious men; and that
the neglect of art, as an interpreter of divine things, has been of evil
consequence to the Christian world.

At present, however, I would only meet such objections as must
immediately arise in the reader's mind.

Sec. 6. Typical beauty may be aesthetically pursued. Instances.

Sec. 7. How interrupted by false feeling.

And first, it will be remembered that I have, throughout the examination
of typical beauty, asserted its instinctive power, the moral meaning of
it being only discoverable by faithful thought. Now this instinctive
sense of it varies in intensity among men, being given, like the hearing
ear of music, to some more than to others: and if those to whom it is
given in large measure be unfortunately men of impious or unreflecting
spirit, it is very possible that the perceptions of beauty should be by
them cultivated on principles merely aesthetic, and so lose their
hallowing power; for though the good seed in them is altogether divine,
yet, there being no blessing in the springing thereof, it brings forth
wild grapes in the end. And yet these wild grapes are well discernible,
like the deadly gourds of Gilgal. There is in all works of such men a
taint and stain, and jarring discord, blacker and louder exactly in
proportion to the moral deficiency, of which the best proof and measure
is to be found in their treatment of the human form, (since in landscape
it is nearly impossible to intr