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mass of ignorance and presumption; their names only serve to reflect credit on proceedings in which they have no share, and which are determined upon by a majority of persons who have no interest in the arts, but what arises to them from the importance attached to them by regular organization, and no opinions but what are dictated to them by some selfconstituted judge. As far as I have had an opportunity of observing the conduct of such bodies of men, instead of taking the lead of public opinion, of giving a firm, manly, and independent tone to that opinion, they make it their business to watch all its caprices, and follow it in every casual turning. They dare not give their sanction to sterling merit, struggling with difficulties, but take advantage of its success to reflect credit on their own reputation for sagacity. Their taste is a servile dependent on their vanity, and their patronage has an air of pauperism about it. Perhaps the only public patronage which was ever really useful to the arts, or worthy of them, was that which they received first in Greece, and afterwards in Italy, from the religious institutions of the country; when the artist felt himself, as it were, a servant at the altar; when his hand gave a visible form to gods or heroes, angels or

apostles; and when the enthusiasm of genius was exalted by mingling with the flame of national devotion. The artist was not here degraded by being made the dependent on the caprice of wealth or fashion, but felt at once the servant and the benefactor of the public. He had to embody, by the highest efforts of his art, subjects which were sacred to the imagination and feelings of the spectators; there was a common link, a mutual sympathy, between them in their common faith. Every other mode of patronage but that which arises either from the general institutions and manners of a people, or from the real, unaffected taste of individuals, must, I conceive, be illegitimate, corrupted in its source, and either ineffectual or injurious to its professed object.

Lastly, Academicians and institutions may be supposed to assist the progress of the fine arts, by promoting a wider taste for them.

In general, it must happen in the first stages of the arts, that as none but those who had a natural genius for them would attempt to practise them, so none but those who had a natural taste for them, would pretend to judge of or criticise them. This must be an incalculable advantage to the man of true genius; for it is no other than the privilege of being tried

by his peers. In an age when connoisseurship had not become a fashion,-when religion, war, and intrigue, occupied the time and thoughts of the great,-only those minds of superior refinement would be led to notice the works of art, who had a real sense of their excellence; and, in giving way to the powerful bent of his own genius, the painter was most likely to consult the taste of his judges. He had not to deal with pretenders to taste, through vanity, affectation, and idleness. He had to appeal to the higher faculties of the soul,-to that deep and innate sensibility to truth and beauty, which required only fit objects to have its enthusiasm excited,-and to that independent strength of mind, which, in the midst of ignorance and barbarism, hailed and fostered genius wherever it met with it. Titian was patronized by Charles the Fifth. Count Castiglione was the friend of Raphael. These were true patrons and true critics; and, as there were no others (for the world, in general, merely looked on and wondered), there can be little doubt that such a period of dearth of factitious patronage would be most favourable to the full development of the greatest talents, and to the attainment of the highest excellence.

By means of public institutions, the number

of candidates for fame and pretenders to criticism is increased beyond all calculation, while the quantity of genius and feeling remains much the same as before; with these disadvantages, that the man of original genius is often lost among the crowd of competitors, who would never have become such but from encouragement and example, and that the voice of the few whom nature intended for judges, is apt to be drowned in the noisy and forward suffrages of shallow smatterers in taste.

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