with a right estimate and enjoyment of art, but it is also as eminently conducive to genius, or right doing, in the most exalted respects, as a false or corrupt taste is practically degrading. This is illustrated by the taste and practice of the Chinese, whose art is decidedly unnatural; and whatever deviates from nature leads from its Author, produces monsters, and is in many respects of immoral tendency.

1638. To this censure of Sinensian taste, the Grotesque, Arabesque, Louis Quatorze, and what in general is called fashionable, and the absurd and incongruous in taste, are variously subject: they have each either a corrupt signification or no meaning; and what has no meaning is without reason, and degrading to intellect.

1639. Opposed to these is that taste which founds itself upon the perfection of nature, such as we see exemplified physically in the landscape gardening of our own country, as it is intellectually in most subjects of Grecian art, and thence distinguished by the appellation of Attic from the former, which may with equal propriety be denominated Asiatic: the one being characterized by grossness, profusion, ignorance, complexity, discordance, and incongruity; the other by refinement, simplicity, intelligence, utility, beauty, congruity, and harmony: so nearly allied is a good taste to moral and intellectual excellence,

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as its opposite is to physical, sensual, and mental degradation.

1640. As taste is an exquisite sensibility of the beauties of nature and art, separate or united, an acute sensibility of the beauties of nature may not be inconsistent with the absence of artificial refinement, and an artificial taste may exist without reference to nature; and if the first savour of vulgarity, the extreme of the latter is the fictitious mimicry of mode and fashion: the one is founded on the authority of nature, the other belongs to custom and the authority of man. It is in the union of both these, wherein an exquisite perception of the beauties of nature is regulated and tempered with the refinements of civilization and the rules of art, that a perfect taste is accomplished, which adds grace to whatever can be adorned.

1641. Simplicity is remarkable in the principles and operations of nature, and it is a mark and maxim of good taste, not only in the higher and intellectual senses, but also with regard to the grosser appetites and externals, and the appeal in both is to intellect or understanding. Hence good taste, in the widest signification, does not extend beyond good sense and understanding.

1642. Nevertheless, the Attic, Anglican, and Natural in taste, agree with the Asiatic, Sinensian, Louisian, and Unnatural, in avoiding regular mechanical forms; and the first of these has, in this

respect, obtained the name of picturesque; which has, in the latter taste, been distinguished by its chief practisers, the Chinese, who have refined upon unnaturalness, by the term sharawadgi.

1643. All the above diversity of taste, springing from the instinct by which man, and the female in particular, are prompted to realize and acknowledge beauty, and to adorn themselves and things around them, is moral, and connected with the principle of good within them; and is eminently entitled to cultivation and refinement as conducive to the honourable, the noble, the decorous, the grand, and the sublime, - the pleasing, the happy, the Divine !

1644. We have alluded here chiefly to Calliurgic art, commonly denominated fine art, the subject of which is Beauty, the object of taste; for this department is medial in art, and is that to which the term has been applied by way of eminence. But the same principles of criticism apply to the extreme departments of art: on the one hand, to material and mechanical art, the subject of which is utility; and, on the other, to moral art, the subject of which is virtue and good: in correspondence altogether with the three chief objects of human action and art, the jucundum, the utile, and the honestum; as will appear more evidently in the sequel.

1645. That morals, and even religion, should be numbered by us among the arts, and placed

at their head as principal, will appear strange to those who have been accustomed to regard them only in a gross and popular manner; but that they are such in a more refined sense, and with nearer relation and approach to a theoretical, scientific, and intellectual station, will be at once evident to the more cultivated and philosophic mind; and that that practice and discipline which constitute art are as essential to intellect and intellectual subjects, as they are to the senses and sensibles, or to material and manual things, will, upon a slight examination, be apparent to every one.

1646. It will not in the end be questioned, therefore, that we have attributed too wide a signification to art; nor will it be objected that, regarding ends as principal, we have considered moral and religious ends as the highest attainments of art, the art of happiness,-the chief object of human science, and the ultimate purpose of creation. To this art owes its dignity, and to this all minor arts are but steps.

1647. Such being the true scope of art, it is not to be wondered at that the early inventors of arts were instinctively celebrated as Divine personages, the greatest benefactors of mankind; nor that in later times it has been conceded to Genius, gifted or divinely inspired, to invent or to advance arts already disclosed; or that, above all, Divine revelation has been conferred upon chosen minds to instruct mankind in the higher mysteries

of moral, political, and religious arts: for in all this there has been truly and philosophically the immediate agency, the hand and assistance of God.

1648. And, however erroneously these Divine honours may have been attributed, or assumed, among ignorant and uncultivated men, still there was in it a general foundation on one great original truth, in kindred connexion and analogy with those more potent and preposterous, but less pious and benevolent idolatries, by which the minds of men have been possessed in all ages and countries, founded on the prime, indefeasible, religious alliance of man with God.

1649. Of the invincible force of truth and good, there needs no stronger proof than that arts, sciences, and inventions, universally useful and true, are never, perhaps, wholly lost amid the wrecks of empires and of time: so that, ages after their inventors and discoverers have sunk into utter oblivion, they continue fresh in preservation, advanced and strengthened by age and improvement.

1650. To this force we are indebted for even the commonest, although not least ingenious, of the arts, contrivances, and productions which ameliorate and sustain life, such as those of the Dairy, &c.-the chemical inventions of Dyeing, &c. the mechanical contrivances of Tools and Instruments - the more intellectual inventions of