VI

unreasonable than if we were to assert, that every speciesof composition ought to be framed according to the decreeswhich the critics have promulgated for the perfection ofthe drama,—decrees, which are in themselves sufficientlytyrannical, and which, unlike the rules of Mr. Burke, areformed from the analysis of a most imperfect model.

Not satisfied with having triumphantly refuted thenotions of those theorists who maintained that fitness andproportion are the sole causes of beauty, Mr. Burke hasgone so far as to deny that these qualities are in any waynecessary to its existence. This opinion, as far as it regardsarchitecture, is erroneous :—for, although there undeniablyexists a real distinction between the ideas of beauty and offitness to an end, yet in a scientific art, of which utility is thechief object, the full perception of excellence requires someeffort of the understanding, and depends, in great measure,on our finding that the means employed are justly calculatedfor the attainment of what we know to have been theends proposed : here, therefore, proportion and fitness areindispensable to the sensation of beauty. Certain striking andremarkable qualities, it is true, may, independently of theseconsiderations, affect all minds alike ; but this arises not fromtheir beauty, nor their proportion and fitness, but from thevague and indistinct ideas which those qualities suggest ofthe superior power and energy requisite for their production.All such qualities, indeed, as tendto create ideas of that superiorenergy and power by which an elevation and expansion ofmind are occasioned, may be stated as the real causes ofgrandeur and sublimity in architecture. Of these, magnitude is