Page:Anecdotes of painters, engravers, sculptors and architects, and curiosities of art (IA anecdotesofpaint01spoo).pdf/34

 "But to reach these proud eminences of intellectual grandeur and extensive usefulness, the arts must be solicited, ample protection must be afforded to them; similar inducements to those which produced these great results must not only be offered, but substantially and permanently provided for their use. This garden of the human intellect must be regularly and assiduously cultivated with great care, and kept clear of the noxious weeds that would deform its beauties. Under genial treatment, all its charms develop themselves, and an endless variety of interesting and charming creations are called into existence, illustrating the high principles of religion, the noblest traits of moral and heroic conduct, and the sweetest dreams of the poetic muse: but the turmoils of war and high political contention are to them most injurious, blasting their fairest bloom, as the poisonous simoon of the desert withers the gardens of Palestine; and to these two causes, and these only, aided by anti-English prejudice, can we attribute the very slow advances which the arts had made among the natives of Britain until the auspicious period of which we are now treating"—time of George III.— Taylor's History of the Fine Arts in Great Britain, vol. ii, p. 150.

ANTIQUITY OF THE FINE ARTS.

Homer, who flourished about B. C. 900, gives a striking proof of the antiquity of the fine arts, in his description of that admirable piece of chased and