two objects perfectly, one muft underftand them both. And hence it follows, that the first step towards acquiring a good tafte is knowledge. Without

knowledge no comparifons can be formed without comparisons the judgement cannot be chaftened; without judgement there can be no fure taste.

I fhall explain myfelf by an example, which I fhall take from sculpture; because, as it appears to me to be the fin pleft of all the arts, I fhall have lefs trouble to make myfelf understood. A young man wants to acquire a taste for fculpture. If Nature has not given him feeling, he fecks an impoffibility. If fhe has given him feeling, he muft then acquire knowledge to form his judge

ment, and this knowledge is to be acquired but by feeing ftatues. A ftatue is the imitation of a man or a woman. The first one he fees, he will be able to fay whether it refembles a woman or a man; but he will not be able to fay, whether or no it is a good ftatue. Good is relative: it is only by comparing that statue with a number of others he can be able to afcertain its .value.

Apollo is always reprefented as a beautiful youth. A hundred fculptors, ancient and modern, have executed this, fubject. Shew a very indifferent one to a young man; and another very capital one to another young man; let them be the firft ftatues that either of them

have feen; and their judgements upon the two will be probably the fame. They will both fay, that these two ftatues are fine. He who has feen the in

much

different Apollo, will be as charmed as he who has feen the other; and his tafte will be equally good. This ftatue is the best he has ever feen; and he is not to be blamed for admiring it. It is evident now that this man's tafte is not fure; and it is evident that he is born with the means of making it fo. Let him then fee the Apollo of Girardon, that of Bernini, feveral others ancient and modern, and let him finish with the Apollo Belvedere. . He will then have seen all that is moft perfect in the art. If he examines each of these ftatues

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ftatues feparately with attention, and afterwards compares them together, he will acquire the power of afcertaining the value of cach, and of affigning to it it's true rank. The knowledge that he has obtained will form his judgement; his judgement will then direct his feelings; and that man will acquire a fure and perfect tafte.

This reafoning appears to me to be juft, when applied to poetry, painting, eloquence, and all the other arts.

The English education, bad as it is, is the beft in Europe. It is effentially bad in one point; and effentially stupid in another bad, in not paying the fmalleft attention to the cultivation of the English language, one of the finest, in

every point of view, that ever existed: ftupid, in making a youth pafs fourteen important years of his life, in learning as much Greek, Latin, and Science, as might very cafily be acquired in fix. However, there is none fo good any where else. Every man of birth in England goes through a courfe of Latin, Greek, French, Italian, Science, and makes the tour of Europe. Those advantages are astonishingly great, and fuch as fcarce any Frenchman has. The profit that a lad derives from this depends upon himself, and upon the perfons to whom he is entrusted. He may read Cicero and Demofthenes, Taffo and Milton, Racine and Moliere, and fee the Transfiguration and the Apollo, with

out