Elements of the philosophy of the human mind. By Dugald Stewart. Rev. and abridged, with critical and explanatory notes, for the use of colleges and schools. By Francis Bowen ...

THE INFLUENCE OF CASUAL ASSOCIATIONS. 233
him the air of a man of the world; but the reputation it bestows
is of a very transitory nature. The works which continue to
please from age to age are written with perfect simplicity, while
those which captivate the multitude by a display of meretricious
ornaments, if, by chance, they should survive the fashions to
which they are accommodated, remain only to furnish a subject
of ridicule to posterity. The portrait of a beautiful woman in
the fashionable dress of the day may please at the moment it is
painted, nay, may perhaps please more than in any that the
fancy of the artist could have suggested; but it is only in the
plainest and simplest drapery that the most perfect form can bo
transmitted with advantage to future times.
The exceptions which the history of literature seems to furnish to these observations are only apparent. That, in the
works of our best authors there are many beauties which have
long and generally been admired, and which yet owe their whole
effect to association, cannot be disputed; but, in such cases, it
will always be found that the associations which are the foundation of our pleasures, have, in consequence of some peculiar
combination of circumstances, been more widely diffused, and
more permanently established among mankind, than those which
date their origin from the caprices of our own age are ever
likely to be. An admiration for the classical remains of antiquity is, at present, not less general in Europe than the advantages of a liberal education; and such is the effect of this
admiration, that there are certain caprices of taste from which
no man who is well educated is entirely free. A composition in
a modern language, which should sometimes depart from the
ordinary modes of expression, from an affectation of the idioms
which are consecrated in the classics, would please a very wide
circle of readers, in consequence of the prevalence of classical
associations; and therefore, such affectations, however absurd
when carried to a degree of singularity, are of a far superior
class to those which are adapted to the fashions of the day.
But still the general principle holds true, that whatever beauties
derive their original merely from casual association, must appear
capricious to those to whom the association does not extend; and
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