Its rank among the various branches of human pur suit, I will content myself by quoting a celebrated living writer: - "There are two ave nues from the little passions and drear calamities of earth, both lead towards Heaven and away from Hell - art and science; but art is more godlike than science; science discov ers. - art creates. The astronomer who catalogues the stars cannot add one atom to the universe. The poet can call a universe from the atom. The chemist may heal with hi drugs the infirmities of the human form: the painter or sculptor fixes into everlasting youth, forms divine, which no disease can ravage, and no years impair."

Schiller, in his philosophical and aesthetic letters, insists upon the necessity of aesthetic as a preparation and foundation for moral culture, and considers that until we are so de veloped, we cannot he morally free, and, by consequence, not responsible, as the will ha no sphere in which to operate. And Sir Joshua Reynolds, even in his day, considered a establishment for such culture as a subordinate school of morality. He contended that: was necessary to the happiness of mankind and security of society, that the mind should be elevated to the idea of general beauty, as a mean of giving it its proper superiority over the common scenes and temptations of life.

The Platonists looked upon the cultivation of the understanding, by the study of science as no less necessary than the practice of virtue, to qualify a human soul for the enjoyment of a future state; and Plato himself has called mathematical demonstrations the cathartics of the soul, as being the most proper means to free it from error, and give it relish for truth. May not, I would ask, a cultivation of the sense of beauty be deemed

I know there are persons so absorbed in the ordinary business of life, that this would sound in their ears like an unkown tongue. There are not wanting men, slaves of utility, who would crush every emotion of the heart as weakness, and quench every spark of imagination. They admire the powers and faculties that, in the present state of society, most rapidly lead to wealth, and despise those which have been the brightest glory of our race, and the chief spur of civilization. Such persons will, however, in common with others, look back with admiration and pride at the great achievements of men in the past history of the world, and particularly of their own countrymen; forgetting that from these very faculties they affect to despise, have chiefly resulted all that dazzles in the past, or in the present possesses any real dignity or importance. We feel the limits of the human understanding, and, the more profound our researches in philosophy, the more palpably we experience it. We see the boundary-line beyond which our minds cannot penetrate; but we are, at the same time, conscious of a void beyond that limit, which superior intelligence might penetrate. It is by the creative faculties that this is to be filled up; hence their advantage over reason.

The imagination, swifter than the wings of the morning, transports us through the universe. The reason is limited, but the imagination is boundless. By it we approach the Infinite and are linked to the Divinity. It is to other than reason that the heroic deeds of those great spirits who have created epochs in chronology are to be ascribed. The great wonders of the ancient world were not the result of reason. The greatness of man is most apparent when he works from the feelings - his power over his fellows more complete when he holds them by the chords of the heart and imagination.

The Arts, which will be treated upon in the following paper, are those of Architecture, Painting, Sculptor, Poetry, Music; the latter two will be occasionally referred to, but my attention will be chiefly given to the three former. To form the genealogical tree of art, my course will be to trace its essence or principle - the beautiful - from its source; which will divide the subject into three distinct branches: - there are three realms of the beautiful, viz: Nature; the Human Mind, or Imagination; and Art itself.

On the first head little need be said. The most interesting of the three kingdoms of Nature is the animal: the highest species of beauty is to be found in that department. The human form and face divine. - the index of the character and passions. - is the chief subject involved in the style called historic, the highest walk of art. The beauty exhibited by the other creatures of God is various, but harmonious. Among the savage tribes of the forest, in the depth of the sea, in the regions of the air, beauty reigns and roles in every mood: - all is animated grace. What beauty is renewed to us every morning! The eastern sky is a flood of glory, and the morning dew sprinkles the earth with diamonds. The glory is repeated in the evening, but is only a prelude - a mere earthly pageant - to the more glorious exhibition of the starry firmament "When the heavens Are thronged with constellations, and the sea Strewn with their images."

This is the sublimest picture, the highest class of art, in the gallery of inanimate nature. Philosophy has no power equal to these luminaries of night, these monitors of the sky, to elevate the heart above the cares and anxieties of life.

Beauty is to be found in nature in all seasons; it is not the nymph of the summer, but the goddess of the year. From green-robed Spring, whose voice,

"More sweet than softest touch of Doric reed, Or Lydian Flute, can soothe the maddening wind*," to Autumn, clad in the hues of the rainbow: nor beneath Winter's snowy mantle and icy zone is it altogether concealed.

But the theme is endless: it is vain to enter into detals: in the moat insignificant objects of nature we find the traces of the beautiful. What delightful curves in leaves, shells, grasses! What exquisite harmony of color also in some of the most ordinary plants and flowers! in the plumage of the feathered tribe! seeming a link between earthly and ethereal creatures; beauties greater and more numerous than appear to the common observer; beauties that only the artist can rightly appreciate; for the eye requires training and practice to see fully the beauties of creation. How wonderful, again, is the effect of motion upon all! What elegance in the movements of some animals, particularly of the human form. A charm ever new and inexhaustible. Beauty is but half developed when at rest: aeneas, in Virgil, knew Venus to be a goddess at first sight, but only discovered her to be the goddess of beauty when she moved: "And by her graceful walk, the queen of love is known."