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The workings of these various forms of benevolent interest can be so represented in language as to awaken an ideal interest in our fellow-beings generally.

RELIGION.

5. The sentiment of Religious regard is a complication of different feelings; in its highest and purest type, tender emotion has the leading place.

Religion, in its ideal form, consists in love of the Deity and love to man for His sake. This is the substance of Christ's answer to the question, Which is the great commandment of the law?' (Matthew xxii. 35-40); and it is abundantly expressed, in combination with lower elements, in the Psalms and in the devotional literature of Christianity.

TENDERNESS PERSONIFIED.

6. Our interest in Nature, as flowing out of personified and other relations to ourselves, is partly Strength and partly Tenderness.

While the interest of Strength makes the Sublime, the interest of Feeling is related to Beauty.

The effects of Tenderness and Beauty, arising in the natural world, are far more numerous and pervading than the effects of Strength and Sublimity. Even the grandest objects of the heavens, and the mightiest forces of the earth, have their tender aspects, which are copiously set forth in poetry.

One chief occasion for dwelling on the tender side of natural things is to provide harmonious surroundings for the love emotions of humanity. Nevertheless, among the subjects of poetry are inanimate scenes of nature, plants and animals; all which can be made to reflect personality in some of its phases.

SORROW-PATHOS.

7. SORROW is resolvable into a manifestation of Pain (however arising), partly or wholly assuaged by a gush of Tenderness.

The soothing influence may, in amount, prove below, equal to, or above the suffering.

The pains arising from crosses in the tender affections

themselves the greatest of all being the death of beloved ones-are the most perfect stimulants of grief and tenderness, and are in consequence the chief instrument employed for calling the emotion into sympathetic exercise.

The feeling is abused when, in literary treatment, greater pains are depicted than the tender outburst can assuage. We must bear with such cases in the actual world and in history, but we need not have them reproduced in art.

CONSTITUENTS OF TENDERNESS.

1. The Tender Feelings of mankind may be referred to three instinctive foundations-Sex, Parental Feeling, and Gregariousness.

The most marked of the human instincts, in connexion with the Tender Emotions, are the two that relate to the Sexes and to Parentage. These are intense and specialized forms of the more diffused and general interest of sociability. It is impossible to lay down any order of precedence among the three instincts. They have characteristics in common, with variety of degree.

LOVE OF THE SEXES.

2. In the LOVE OF THE SEXES, the first ingredient is the Animal Passion.

This is in a great measure excluded from Art, for moral reasons; although different ages and different peoples have viewed it differently, and ancient poetry could not be adequately criticized without adverting to it. Modern poets, when not ignoring it, keep it at a distance by the arts of suggestion, innuendo, and other devices for refining the grossness of the animal passions.

3. The next ingredient is Physical Attraction.

In man, as in many of the lower animals, each sex has a characteristic physical conformation by which the other sex is drawn and fascinated. The superior charm of women with men, and of men with women, is explained by this difference; and the more completely it is realized, the greater is the beauty of the one in the estimation of the other. Stature, form, structure of skin, are all to a certain degree

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peculiar for each sex; and an interest is generated through the several peculiarities.

The eye is not the only sense affected by the peculiarities of sex. The distinctive quality of voice appeals to the ear. Touch and odour are also media of attraction between the sexes, and between human beings generally.

The artistic embodiment of sex distinctions is complete only in painting and in sculpture. The attempt to represent in poetry the human form and features has the defects peculiar to verbal description. To whatever extent poetry can overcome this disadvantage, it exceeds the power of painting by appealing to a plurality of senses.

4. The third ingredient may be described as Mental Attraction; the principal element being Devotedness, or Reciprocal liking.

The mode of Mental attractiveness that principally operates to heighten the charm of sex, is reciprocal love and devotion. The highest form of this Devotedness is the goodness that imparts material benefits; next is the expression of friendly interest and benevolent sentiment; and, lastly, the varied language of personal affection and endearment.

It is perfectly possible, and not unfrequent, for the one sex to be drawn to the other by physical charms alone, and in the absence of reciprocated affection. But the influence of expressed love on one side to draw forth love on the other, is a power in itself, and co-operates mightily with personal attractiveness. As seen in Barry Cornwall's song

MAN, man loves his steed,

For its blood or its breed,

For its odour the rose, for its honey the bee,

His own haughty beauty,

From pride or from duty;

But I love my love, because he loves me.

5. The influence of Reciprocation of love and attachment pervades all the forms of Tender Feeling.

This is the great force that holds human beings together, without reference to the special instincts. The rendering of mutual services is a basis of affection, when there is no other.

GRATITUDE expresses the response to favours received, especially when there is no equal return in kind. It is the emotion engendered by important services, and is a species. of tender affection to which mankind are more or less sus

ceptible. The interplay of assistance and kindness is the ideal of happiness through every relation of society.

6. Besides reciprocal liking, the love of the Sexes is promoted by every form of physical, intellectual, or moral Excellence.

The various forms of physical and intellectual excellence that make up efficiency for the uses of life, give attractiveness or interest to personality, and augment the charm of the love affection. Hence in depicting ideal characters with a view to imparting interest, these other forms of excellence are superadded.

The narrative of Othello's love-making, as given by himself, shows how extremely wide is the sphere of interest between the sexes.

PARENTAL FEELING.

7. In the PARENTAL RELATION we have an instinctive source of emotion, ranking in strength with Love of the Sexes. The typical embodiment is the regard of the Mother towards her own child.

The infant, besides its personal relation to the mother, is characterized by helplessness and total dependence, of which the most conspicuous mark is its Littleness. Maternal care receives support from the accompanying fondness.

The instinct for protecting the helpless and the little is not confined to the maternal breast. The father shares with the mother the regard for his own offspring. People that are not parents still show the paternal instinct so far as to experience a protective fondness towards creatures that are relatively little, weak, and dependent.

The protectorship thus manifested is diffused throughout all the relationships of mankind; being, so far, a source of benevolent impulses and a check upon our malevolent promptings. To evoke this salutary as well as enjoyable attitude of mind, the picture of weakness, humility, dependence, littleness, has to be drawn. The child-like situation of perfect subjection and total dependence, together with the diminutive form and sensuous attractions, is the inspiring cause of this variety of tender feeling.

Pity for suffering, or for distress generally, may be connected, in the depths of our nature, with the same emotional fountain, but

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it has a somewhat different manifestation. It is a mixture of the pain of sympathy and the pleasure of tender emotion in general; and, in many cases, the pain predominates. Although, therefore, it is so far a source of pleasure, it is not the same intense gratification as the love of the little. A wounded elephant, or a suffering giant, would inspire pity; but an infant at the breast, a pet canary, a child's doll, exemplify a far deeper interest. On occasions when the strong are dependent on the kindness of the weak, it is not uncommon to assume the fiction of the opposite relationship; as when the child applies the language of petting to its parent.

The physical and mental charms of infancy heighten, but do not make, the parental fondness. Still more efficient is the growth of a counter affection on the part of the child. There is a contribution from this source of emotion to the love of the sexes, owing to the circumstance that, in man, as in most of the inferior animals, the male is physically stronger, as well as legally superior. The tenderness of a mother for her child may be regarded as so far a type of human tenderness in general.

8. The reciprocal or upward affection of the child for the parent, has no natural instinct to draw upon; and is, therefore, a case of Gratitude, more or less promoted by the situation.

The inferiority of the reciprocated attachment of children to parents has been often noticed. It seems to be a species of gratitude arising out of the sense of the long continued attentions of the parent. The prodigal, when he said, 'I will arise and go to my father,' was driven by stress of hunger, more than by filial regard: the father overlooked all his folly, and welcomed him with a gush of tenderness. In endeavouring to awaken our tender interest from this source, the poet or artist works at a disadvantage. Gratitude is a natural product under given circumstances, and is strengthened by the sense of justice; but it is not a first-class emotion, like the sexual feeling, or the interest in the little and the protected. At the same time, its opposite-ingratitude-is a source of the acutest pain.

This is one of the difficulties felt in arousing the religious regards. Christianity, recognizing the difficulty, endeavours to employ to the fullest our capacities of realizing Tender Feeling towards a Superior, by clothing the relation of God to man with all the attributes of Fatherhood.