:

When you read of the ancient Greeks and Romans, you will be animated with that noble spirit of defending their country, which then prevailed, without the mercenary motives which have taken the place of it in latter ages; when there are other ways for men to raise and enrich themselves without public merit.

Though modern history is necessary, on ac count of the changes which have been made in the art of war, you will find that the anci ent discipline was better, and the lives and characters of soldiers more military than at present, when they who strove for the mastery were temperate in all things, and inured to every kind of hardship.

You will perhaps observe, that sieges cost more time, and blood, and treasure, while prosperous battles in the field win more country and cities, which commonly surrender to the conqueror. When a war is carried into an enemy's country, it is maintained at their charge: the soldiers are obliged to more vigilance and a stricter discipline: the aggressor is animated, and the invaded are discou raged.

From a multitude of similar instances, too numerous to be pointed out particularly, gen

tlemen

tlemen by reading history may improve their minds, and acquire that experience of things which will fit them for advice and action when their country shall have need of their assistance for courage without conduct, and industry without information, are of little value.

LETTER XI.

On Taste,

WHAT we call Taste, in the metaphorical sense of the word, is, that faculty by which we distinguish beauty and excellence in the works of art; as the palate distinguishes what is pleasant in meat and drink. This latter faculty is natural; the former, so far as it signifies judgment, is the result of education and experience, and can be found only in a cultivated mind. Arts and sciences are so nearly related among themselves, that your judgment in one will always want some assistance from your knowledge of another: whence it comes to pass, that of people who pretend to taste, not one in twenty is really possessed of it. A spectator has heard others say, that such a figure in a certain picture is very fine; therefore he says so; and perhaps he is really struck with its beauties when they are pointed out: but in order to make the discovery for himself, it is necessary he should have some acquaintance with the anatomy of the human figure, its due proportion, and the rules by which

bodies are justly represented in perspective. If the figure is coloured, he should know what tints are natural to the skin, before he can pronounce whether they are true upon the

canvass.

I had frequent opportunities of seeing from a particular instance how prone all ignorant persons are to prefer the worse to the better, and admire false excellence rather than true. In the seat of a certain nobleman, in the county where I was born, there is a very fine hall with two equestrian paintings in it nearly as large as life, one at each end of the room. Of these two, one is as graceful and highly finished as any picture of the sort in the kingdom: the other has little more merit than the figure of St. George upon a sign-post; but having a gaudy appearance, with a very illjudged glare of light in it, every vulgar eye is taken with it; while the exquisite beauties of its companion are neglected.

Hogarth, in his Analysis of Beauty, has laid down some of the best rules extant for enabling a person to distinguish elegance of drawing and propriety of design. His Line of Beauty, as he calls it, is a flowing line with. contrary flexures, something like the letter s, but not so much inflected, which takes place

in the most elegant forms that nature presents to us; and will therefore communicate the like elegance to works of art, when it is judiciously introduced and applied. We trace it in the stream that winds through the vale, in the curvatures of hills, the foliage of flowers, the elevations and depressions of the muscles in the human figure, the gracetul inclinations and attitudes of the body; and a thousand other instances. The remarks which Hogarth himself has made upon it in that work (as original as any of this age or country) are very just and striking; and they teach us, that beauty is not the creature of human fancy, as vulgarly supposed, but a real excellence, to be accounted for and demonstrated on actual principles of science. For farther instruction in this matter I must refer you 'to the book itself, which deserves not only to be read but studied.

But there is another source of beauty, which has little or no dependence upon that famous line and yet, if it is considered, I think it will carry artists to some uncommon perfection in their works, and assist a spectator in judging better of what they have composed.

Harmony in music has certain measures, which may be transferred with advantage to visible