P.S. I wish I could find a more familiar word than aesthetic for works of taste and criticism. It is, however, in all respects better, and of more reputable origin, than belletristic. To be sure, there is _tasty_; but that has been long ago emasculated for all unworthy uses by milliners, tailors, and the androgynous correlatives of both, formerly called _'its_, and now yclept dandies. As our language, therefore, contains no other _useable_ adjective, to express that coincidence of form, feeling, and intellect, that something, which, confirming the inner and the outward senses, becomes a new sense in itself, to be tried by laws of its own, and acknowledging the laws of the understanding so far only as not to contradict them; that faculty which, when possessed in a high degree, the Greeks termed φῖλοκᾶλία, but when spoken of generally, or in kind only, το αἰσθητικόν; and for which even our substantive, Taste, is a--not inappropriate--but very inadequate metaphor; there is reason to hope, that the term _aesthetic_, will be brought into common use as soon as distinct thoughts and definite expressions shall once more become the requisite accomplishment of a gentleman. So it was in the energetic days, and in the starry court of our _English_-hearted Eliza; when trade, the nurse of freedom, was the enlivening counterpoise of agriculture, not its alien and usurping spirit; when commerce had all the enterprise, and more than the romance of war; when the precise yet pregnant terminology of the schools gave bone and muscle to the diction of poetry and eloquence, and received from them in return passion and harmony; but, above all, when from the self-evident truth, that what _in kind_ constitutes the superiority of man to animals, the same _in degree_ must constitute the superiority of men to each other, the practical inference was drawn that every proof of these distinctive faculties, being in a _tense_ and _active_ state, that even the sparks and crackling of mental electricity, in the sportive approaches and collisions of ordinary intercourse, (such as we have in the wit-combats of Benedict and Beatrice, of Mercutio, and in the dialogues assigned to courtiers and gentlemen, by all the dramatic writers of that reign,) are stronger indications of natural superiority, and, therefore, more becoming signs and accompaniments of _artificial_ rank, than apathy, studied mediocrity, and the ostentation of wealth. When I think of the vigour and felicity of style characteristic of the age from Edward VI to the restoration of Charles, and observable in the letters and family memoirs of noble families--take, for instance, the _Life of Colonel Hutchinson_, written by his widow--I cannot suppress the wish--O that the _habits_ of those days could return, even though they should bring pedantry and Euphuism in their train![121]