Eyes with mute rapture every waving line,
Prints with adoring kiss the Paphian shrine,
And learns erelong, the perfect form confess'd,
IDEAL BEAUTY from its Mother's breast.

[Footnote: _Seeks with spread hands_, l. 169. These eight
beautiful lines are copied from Mr. Bilsborrow's Address
prefixed to Zoonomia, and are translated from that work;
Sect. XVI. 6.]

[Footnote: _Ideal Beauty_, l. 176. Sentimental Love, as
distinguished from the animal passion of that name, with
which it is frequently accompanied, consists in the desire or
sensation of beholding, embracing, and saluting a beautiful
object.

The characteristic of beauty therefore is that it is the
object of love; and though many other objects are in common
language called beautiful, yet they are only called so
metaphorically, and ought to be termed agreeable. A Grecian
temple may give us the pleasurable idea of sublimity, a
Gothic temple may give us the pleasurable idea of variety,
and a modern house the pleasurable idea of utility; music and
poetry may inspire our love by association of ideas; but none
of these, except metaphorically, can be termed beautiful, as
we have no wish to embrace or salute them.

Our perception of beauty consists in our recognition by the
sense of vision of those objects, first, which have before
inspired our love by the pleasure, which they have afforded
to many of our senses; as to our sense of warmth, of touch,
of smell, of taste, hunger and thirst; and, secondly, which
bear any analogy of form to such objects.]

"Now on swift wheels descending like a star
Alights young EROS from his radiant car;
On angel-wings attendant Graces move,
And hail the God of SENTIMENTAL LOVE. 180
Earth at his feet extends her flowery bed,
And bends her silver blossoms round his head;
Dark clouds dissolve, the warring winds subside.
And smiling ocean calms his tossing tide,
O'er the bright morn meridian lustres play,
And Heaven salutes him with a flood of day.

[Footnote: _Alights young Eros_, l. 178. There were two
deities of Love belonging to the heathen mythology, the one
said to be celestial, and the other terrestrial. Aristophanes