the rules of art, and on this immovable foundation they must ever

stand.

This search and study of the history of the mind ought not to be

confined to one art only. It is by the analogy that one art bears

to another that many things are ascertained which either were but

faintly seen, or, perhaps, would not have been discovered at all if

the inventor had not received the first hints from the practices of

a sister art on a similar occasion. The frequent allusions which

every man who treats of any art is obliged to draw from others in

order to illustrate and confirm his principles, sufficiently show

their near connection and inseparable relation.

All arts having the same general end, which is to please, and

addressing themselves to the same faculties through the medium of

the senses, it follows that their rules and principles must have as

great affinity as the different materials and the different organs

or vehicles by which they pass to the mind will permit them to

retain.

We may therefore conclude that the real substance, as it may be

called, of what goes under the name of taste, is fixed and

established in the nature of things; that there are certain and

regular causes by which the imagination and passions of men are

affected; and that the knowledge of these causes is acquired by a

laborious and diligent investigation of nature, and by the same

slow progress as wisdom or knowledge of every kind, however

instantaneous its operations may appear when thus acquired.

It has been often observed that the good and virtuous man alone can

acquire this true or just relish, even of works of art. This

opinion will not appear entirely without foundation when we

consider that the same habit of mind which is acquired by our

search after truth in the more serious duties of life, is only