fuperior virtue ought to be culled for the perufal of the young pupil, who will read them with eagernefs, and revolve them with pleasure. Thus the young mind becomes enamoured of moral beauty, and the paffions are lifted on the fide of humanity. Meanwhile knowledge of a different fpecies will go hand in hand with the advances of morality, and the understanding be gradually extended. Virtue and fentiment reciprocally affift each other, and both conduce to the improvement of perception. While the scholar's chief attention is employed in learning the Latin and Greek languages, and this is generally the task of childhood and early youth, it is even then the business of the Prceptor to give his mind a turn for obfervation, to direct his powers of difcernment, to point out the diftinguishing marks of character, and dwell upon the charms of moral and intellectual beauty, as they may chance to occur in the Claffics that are ufed for his inftruction. In reading Cornelius Nepos and Plutarch's Lives, even with a view to grammatical improvement only, he will infenfibly imbibe and learn to compare ideas of greater importance. He will become enamoured of virtue and patriotifm, and acquire a deteftation for vice, cruelty, and corruption. The perufal of the Roman story in the works of Florus, Salluft, Livy, and Tacitus, will irrefiftibly engage his attention, expand his conception, cherish his memory, exercife his judgment, and warm him with a noble fpirit of emulation. He will contemplate with love and admiration the difinterested candour of Ariftides, furnamed the Juft, whom the guilty cabals of his rival Themiftocles exiled from his ungrateful country by a sentence of Oftracism. He will be surprised to learn, that one of his fellow-citizens, an illiterate artifan, bribed by his enemies, chancing to meet him in the street without knowing his perfon, defired he would write Ariftides

Ariftides on his fhell (which was the method thofe plebeians used to vote against delinquents), when the innocent patriot wrote his own name without complaint or expoftulation. He will with equal aftonishment applaud the inflexible integrity of Fabricius, who preferred the poverty of innocence to all the pomp of affluence, with which Pyrrhus endeavoured to feduce him from the arms of his country. He will approve with tranfport the noble generosity of his foul in rejecting the propofal of that Prince's phyfician, who offered to take him off by poifon; and in fending the caitiff bound to his fovereign, whom he would have fo bafely and cruelly betrayed.

In reading the antient authors, even for the purpofes of fchool education, the unformed tafte will begin to relifh the irrefiftible energy, greatness, and fublimity of Homer, the ferene majefty, the melody, and pathos of Virgil, the tenderness of Sappho and Tibullus, the elegance and propriety of Terence; the grace, vivacity, fatire, and fentiment of Horace.

Nothing will more conduce to the improvement of the fcholar in his knowledge of the languages, as well as in tafte and morality, than his being obliged to tranflate choice parts and paffages of the moft approved Claffics, both poetry and profe, efpecially the latter; fuch as the orations of Demofthenes and Ifocrates, the Treatife of Longinus on the Sublime, the Commentaries of Cæfar, the Epiftles of Cicero and the Younger Pliny, and the two celebrated fpeeches in the Catilinarian confpiracy by Salluft. By this practice he will become more intimate with the beauties of the writing and the idioms of the lan guage, from which he tranflates; at the fame time it will form his ftyle, and by exercifing his talent of expreffion make him a more perfect mafter of his mother tongue. Cicero tells us, that in tranflating two orations, which the most celebrated orators of VOL. IV. Greece

Greece pronounced against each other, he performed this tafk not as a fervile interpreter but as an orator, preferving the fentiments, forms, and figures of the original, but adapting the expreffion to the taste and manners of the Romans:-"In quibus non ver"bum pro verbo neceffe habui reddere, fed genus omnium "verborum vimque fervavi ;" " in which I did not think it was neceffary to tranflate literally word for word, but I preferved the natural and full scope of the whole." Of the fame opinion was Horace, who fays in his Art of Poetry,

Nec verbum verbo curatis reddere fidus

Interpres

Nor word for word tranflate with painful care

Nevertheless, in taking the liberty here granted, we are apt to run into the other extreme, and fubftitute equivalent thoughts and phrafes, till hardly any features of the original remain. The metaphors of figures, especially in poetry, ought to be as religiously preferved as the images of painting, which we cannot alter or exchange without deftroying, or injuring at least, the character and style of the original.

In this manner the Preceptor will fow the feeds of that tafte, which will foon germinate, rife, bloffom, and produce perfect fruit by dint of future care and cultivation. In order to reftrain the luxuriancy of the young imagination, which is apt to run riot, to enlarge the stock of ideas, exercise the reason, and ripen the judgment, the pupil must be engaged in the feverer ftudy of Science. He must learn Geometry, which Plato recommends for ftrengthening the mind, and enabling it to think with precifion. He must be made acquainted with Geography and Chronology, and trace Philofophy through all her branches. Without Geography and Chronology he will not be able to acquire a diftinct idea of History;

nor

nor judge of the propriety of many interefting scenes, and a thousand allufions, that prefent themselves in the works of Genius. Nothing opens the mind fo much as the researches of Philofophy; they infpire us with fublime conceptions of the Creator, and subject, as it were, all nature to our command. These beftow that liberal turn of thinking, and in a great measure contribute to that univerfality in learning, by which a man of tafte ought to be eminently diftinguished. But Hiftory is the inexhauftible fource, from which he will derive his moft ufeful knowledge refpecting the progrefs of the human mind, the conftitution of government, the rife and decline of empires, the revolution of arts, the variety of character, and the viciffitudes of fortune.

The knowledge of History enables the Poet not only to paint characters, but also to defcribe magnificent and interesting scenes of battle and adventure. Not that the Poet or Painter ought to be reftrained to the letter of hiftorical truth. Hiftory represents what has really happened in nature; the other arts exhibit what might have happened, with fuch exaggeration of circumftance and feature, as may be deemed an improvement on Nature: but this exaggeration must not be carried beyond the bounds of probability; and thefe, generally freaking, the knowledge of Hiftory will ascertain. It would be extremely difficult, if not impoffible, tổ find a man actually exifting, whofe proportions fhould answer to thofe of the Greek ftatue, diftinguished by the name of the Apollo of Belvedere ; or to produce a woman fimilar in proportion of parts to the other celebrated piece called the Venus de Medicis; therefore it may be truly affirmed, that they are not conformable to the real ftandard of nature: nevertheless every artist will own that they are the very archetypes of grace, elegance, and fymmetry;

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metry; and every judging eye muft behold them with admiration, as improvements on the lines and lineaments of nature. The truth is, the sculptor or ftatuary composed the various proportions in nature from a great number of different fubjects, every individual of which he found imperfect or defective in fome one particular, though beautiful in all the reft; and from these observations, corroborated by tafte and judgment, he formed an ideal pattern, according to which his idea was modelled, and produced in execution.

Every body knows the ftory of Zeuxis, the famous painter of Heraclea, who, according to Pliny, invented the chiaro ofcure, or difpofition of light and fhade, among the ancients, and excelled all his contemporaries in the chromatique, or art of colouring. This great artift being employed to draw a perfect beauty in, the character of Helen, to be placed in the Temple of Juno, culled out five of the moft beautiful damfels the city could produce, and felecting what was excellent in each, combined them in one picture according to the predifpofition of his fancy, fo that it fhone forth an amazing model of perfection *. In like manner every man of genius, regulated by true tafte, entertains in his imagination an ideal beauty, conceived and cultivated as an improvement upon nature: and this we refer to the article of invention.

It is the business of Art to imitate Nature, but not with a fervile pencil; and to chufe thofe attitudes

*Præbete igitur mihiquæfo, inquit, ex iftis virginibus formofiffimas, dum pingo id, quod pollicitus fum vobis, ut mutum in fimu lacrum ex animali exemplo veritas transferatur,-Ille autem quinque delegit. - Neque enim putavit omnia, quæ quæreret ad venuftatem, uno corpore fe reperire poffe; ideo quod nihil fimplici in genere omnibus ex partibus perfectum natura expolivit. Cic. Lib. 2. de Inv. cap. I.

and