anguage of touch, observing that certain gradations of the
shades of colour, by our previous experience of having examined
similar bodies by our hands or lips, suggest our ideas of solidity,
and of the forms of solid bodies; as when we view a tree, it would
otherwise appear to us a flat green surface, but by association of
ideas we know it to be a cylindrical stem with round branches. This
association of the ideas acquired by the sense of touch with those of
vision, we do not allude to in the following observations, but to the
agreeable trains or tribes of ideas and sentiments connected with
certain kinds of visible objects.

V. _Sentiment of Beauty._

Of these catenations of sentiments with visible objects, the first is
the sentiment of Beauty or Loveliness; which is suggested by
easy-flowing curvatures of surface, with smoothness; as is so well
illustrated in Mr. Burke's Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful, and in
Mr. Hogarth's analysis of Beauty; a new edition of which is much
wanted separate from his other works.

The sentiment of Beauty appears to be attached from our cradles to the
easy curvatures of lines, and smooth surfaces of visible objects, and
to have been derived from the form of the female bosom; as spoken of
in Zoonomia, Vol. I. Section XVI. on Instinct.

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.

When the babe, soon after it is bor