Page:The Hunterian Oration for 1850.djvu/57

41 power, from the simple beauty delineated in the form of an arabesque, to the highest sublimity of genius exhibited in the majestic beauty of the Theseus, or the other Greek adorn- ments of the great temple of Athens, which British taste and enterprise, have safely deposited within the walls of our National Museum.

It cannot be denied that the full appreciation of the highest sublimity of art, requires a specific development, but its study must always exercise a refining influence over the character; and I pity the man who could see unmoved the sublime exhibitions displayed in the marbles of Nineveh, and who, quite irrespectively of their intrinsic beauty, in which they far exceed the later productions of Egyptian art, does not attach to them a sacred character, as he enters the chamber allotted to them, with an emotion of awe, forming the great link in the chain of evidence, of the biblical history of a former. world.

If I appear to enlarge unnecessarily on the subject of taste, it is because I believe, by its more general cultivation, we may eradicate much of the human dross that pervades our profession ; for taste is not more a matter of perception and feeling than of conduct, and forms a regulating principle of our lives. It associates itself with our every action, as well as with the motive that animates them.

“Where taste exists in the highest perfection,” says Dugald Stewart, “we may expect to find an understanding discriminating, comprehensive, and unprejudiced, united with a love of truth and nature, and with a temper superior to the irritation of the little passions, while it implies a spirit of accurate observation, and of patient induction, applied to the most