"I do not dare to rest in the favor of God: the issue is with men. The favor of Heaven is not easily preserved. Heaven is hard to be depended on. Men lose its favoring appointment, because they cannot carry out the virtue of their forefathers. Heaven is not to be trusted.". "Great Heaven has no affections: it helps only the virtuous."

Yet it is not quite clear that this is not a clumsy way of expressing faith: the literary art of the Duke of Chow seems to consist in veiling his thoughts.

Here we have a mingling of superstition:

"The Tranquillizing King left to me the great precious tortoise, a connecting link between me and the intelligence of Heaven. I consulted it, and it told me that there would be great trouble in the region of the west. Accordingly, we have the present senseless movements." "One day there was a senseless movement; and, the day after, ten men of worth appeared to help me to go forward, to restore tranquillity, and perpetuate the plans of my father. The great business I am engaging in will have a successful issue; for I have divined, and always got a favorable intimation."

"Having chosen officers for divining by tortoise and by milfoil, they are to be charged to perform their duties. They will find signs of rain, clearing up, cloudiness, want of connection, and crossing. In all, the indications are seven, - five given by the tortoise, and two by the milfoil, - by which errors may be traced out. These officers having been appointed, three men are to interpret the indications; and the words of two are to be followed."

"When the tortoise and milfoil are both opposed to the views of men, there will be good fortune in stillness, and active operations will be unlucky."

Many such passages as these can be found; but they are not in preponderance, and are no offset to the wise insight, good sense, and pure religion which we find in paragraphs like the following:

"Do not oppress the friendless and childless; do not fear the high and illustrious. When men have ability and administrative power, induce them to develop it, and so promote the prosperity of their country. All well-disposed men having a competency will be good.

If they do not get what they love in their families, they will go on to be guilty of crime."

"Complete virtue allows no contemptuous familiarity. When a prince treats superior men with familiarity, they will not give him their hearts; when he so treats inferiors, they will not give him their strength. Be earnest, early and late. If you do not watch jealously over small matters, you will fail in great."

"I reflect on Heaven's severe punishments, but I do not murmur. Do not create complaints; do not use bad counsels nor uncommon ways. Decidedly, and with sincerity, give yourself to the imitation of active virtue. Give repose to your mind hereby, examine your virtue, send far forward your plans, and, by generous forbearance, conduct the people to repose."-"When sovereigns appointed inspectors, they did so to govern the people, and said to them, 'Do not give way to violence or oppression; go on to show reverence for the weak, and to find connections for destitute women.'

"The wise, not thinking, become foolish; and the foolish, by thinking, become wise."

"If you cannot reverently realize the harmony which I enjoin, do not hereafter murmur against me."-"By means of bold decision are future difficulties to be avoided. With rank, pride comes unperceived; with emolument comes extravagance. Let reverence and economy be real virtues, and do not hypocritically exhibit them in your affairs. Practise them as virtues, and you will daily become more admirable and more at ease. Practise them in hypocrisy, you will daily become more stupid, worn out with the toil."

"Perfect government is like piercing fragrance, and influences the spiritual Intelligences. It is not the millet which has this piercing fragrance it is bright virtue."

"Be not passionate with the obstinate, and so dislike them. The people are born good, and are changed. Seek not every quality in one individual."

"In settling the five cases of error, there are dangers. To be warped by the influence of power, by a private grudge, by female solicitation, by bribes or by applications, is an offence equal to the crime before the court."

"In reproving others, there is no difficulty; but to receive reproof, and allow it to have free course, this is difficult! There were my old counsellors. I said, 'They will not accommodate themselves to me;' and I hated them. There were my new counsellors;

and for a time I trusted them. I have thought deeply, and concluded: Let me have but one resolute minister, plain and sincere, having a simple, complaisant mind, and possessed of generosity, regarding the talents of others as if he himself possessed them; and, when he finds wise and accomplished men, loving them more than he expresses, really showing himself able to bear them, such a man will indeed be a giver of benefits! The glory and tranquillity of a state may perhaps arise from the excellence of one man."

The tenth book of the fifth part contains what is called the "Announcement about Drunkenness." The Hea dynasty had come to an unfortunate end, through the drunkenness of sovereign and people. The Duke of Chow addresses his young brother in the name of the king, assuring him that spirits are to be used only in sacrifices; that if, in times of prosperity, calamity comes, it is the result of excess. Especially does the king desire to save his young people. "Spirits may be used to entertain guests, and at sacrifices; but let virtue preside, so that there be no intoxication." Spirits may be used after hard labor in the open air, after parents are made happy, -so long as the feasters maintain a watchful self-examination. He refers to the ancients. In their time, ministers respectfully discharged their helping duties, and dared allow themselves no idleness; how much less would they dare indulge in drinking! Even the inferiors kept themselves free of spirits. Not only did they not dare indulge in them, but they had not leisure, reverently attending to the affairs of the sovereign. Then, alluding to Yin, he says, "The rank odor of the people's resentments, and the drunkenness of his creatures, went up on high; so Heaven sent down ruin on Yin. There is not any cruel oppression of Heaven: people themselves accelerate their own punishment."-"Sternly keep yourselves from drink." On the whole, it is to be doubted whether antiquity has given us any thing more wonderful than this book.

These extracts bring us to the end of Dr. Legge's published translations. It would not be easy to exaggerate the service he has done; and we hope he will live to complete, with his own hand, the seven volumes he has projected. He will give us a laborious translation and a faithfully annotated text.

VOL. LXXXIV. -NEW SERIES, Vol. V. NO. III.

29

Some educated Chinese will perhaps some day turn the barren paragraphs into idiomatic English. We have alluded to the sharpness with which the Doctor attacks Baron Bunsen; but we should hardly do him justice if we did not say, in conclusion, that scarcely another man could be found, of his habits and theological views, who would express himself as temperately.

ART. IV. -LOVE OF THE BEAUTIFUL.

In

WHENEVER the beautiful is present and discerned, the consciousness of it involves a sense of fitness and congruity. A sense of fitness and congruity may not in itself constitute the beautiful, but to the feeling or enjoyment of the beautiful it is a necessary condition. The violation of such condition either contradicts the beautiful, or puts it out of place. the first case, the violation gives pain; in the second, it gives offence as well as pain. When we expect the beautiful, the absence of it disappoints us, the contrary of it shocks us: but when we find it where we neither expect nor want nor wish it, we look on it as abused, as desecrated; and we are not gratified, but indignant. To have true and full enjoyment of it, the object must not only be beautiful in itself, but beautiful in the right circumstances.

A simple incident, many years ago, originally awakened these ideas in my mind. The front of a mercantile building in Liverpool had an upper projection of massive granite resting on the shoulders of sculptured oxen. I used frequently, for two or three years, to pass by this building. The representation of animals, as they thus appeared, always oppressed me with a sense of pain. Whatever might have been the intention of the architect, or whatever might have been the impression on others, to me the situation of the figures robbed them of both dignity and beauty: it moved me with a sort of troubled sympathy. I had no philosophy of art; I had never read or reflected on the subject; the circumstance first startled me into thought. Much I mused and speculated on the feeling which it occasioned. The building was fine,

--

so were the figures: why, then, should not the feeling which they excited be one of pleasure? Why, I used to ask myself, am I concerned for these creatures? I know that they are merely stone, and that they suffer no more than they did unshaped within the quarry. True: still they gave me pain. They gave pain because, in looking on them, I could not help thinking of living brutes in a similar position, — a position doubly disagreeable, since, first, it implied hardship; and, secondly, it implied needless hardship. The burden was disproportioned to the strength of the animals; there seemed no reason why they should bear it; there seemed no reason why the burden on the animals should be there. I was led thence to inquire, "What conditions of mind accompany, if they do not constitute, a sense of the beautiful?" Whatever they are, they must include a sense of pleasure, of pleasure which the object gives to the mind, by completeness in itself, and congruity in its relations. Here there was incompleteness in the objects, and incongruity in their relations: however admirable the art might have been mechanically, in vital and moral suggestions a painful impression was certainly its result. When I came to learn, as afterwards I did, that even the Greeks introduced such figures into sculpture, I began to doubt my judgment, and to fear that, in trusting to mere instinct, I had been led into a blunder and a heresy. But a writer in the last edition of the "Encyclopædia Britannica" has brought me back to confidence in my early faith. "The great artists," says this writer, "by making beauty the first quality in art, and by forming a system which, while it forbade extravagance, checked development, committed fewer faults than any others; but they did commit some faults. . . . Nothing could be more barbarous than to represent, not only a human figure, but that of a woman, sustaining a vast weight, and sustaining it with difficulty. If it be excusable to represent giants thus supporting great masses, can it be to put women in their places, as columns on which a building rests?"

The line of observation which I propose to follow leads to no discussion on theories of beauty. I would speak on the