ever wrest from him.

Sec. 3. The exceeding nobility of these ideas.

Such are the function and force of ideas of relation. They are what I
have asserted in the second chapter of this section to be the noblest
subjects of art. Dependent upon it only for expression, they cause all
the rest of its complicated sources of pleasure to take, in comparison
with them, the place of mere language or decoration; nay, even the
noblest ideas of beauty sink at once beside these into subordination and
subjection. It would add little to the influence of Landseer's picture
above instanced, Chap. II., Sec. 4, that the form of the dog should be
conceived with every perfection of curve and color which its nature was
capable of, and that the ideal lines should be carried out with the
science of a Praxiteles; nay, the instant that the beauty so obtained
interfered with the impression of agony and desolation, and drew the
mind away from the feeling of the animal to its outward form, that
instant would the picture become monstrous and degraded. The utmost
glory of the human body is a mean subject of contemplation, compared to
the emotion, exertion and character of that which animates it; the
lustre of the limbs of the Aphrodite is faint beside that of the brow of
the Madonna; and the divine form of the Greek god, except as it is the
incarnation and expression of divine mind, is degraded beside the
passion and the prophecy of the vaults of the Sistine.

Sec. 4. Why no subdivision of so extensive a class is necessary.

Ideas of relation are of course, with respect to art generally, the most
extensive as the most important source of pleasure; and if we proposed
entering upon the criticism of historical works, it would be absurd to
attempt to do so without further subdivision and arrangement. But the
old landscape painters got over so much canvas without either exercise
of, or appeal to, the intellect, that we shall be little troubled with
the subject as far as they are concerned; and whatever subdivision we
may adopt, as it will therefore have particular reference to the works
of modern artists, will be better understood when we have obtained some
knowledge of them in less important points.

By the term "ideas of relation," then, I mean in future to express all
those sources of pleasure, which involve and require, at the instant of
their perception, active exertion of the intellectual powers.

SECTI