innovation always brings with it.

To this we may add, even the durability of the materials will often

contribute to give a superiority to one object over another.

Ornaments in buildings, with which taste is principally concerned,

are composed of materials which last longer than those of which

dress is composed; it, therefore, makes higher pretensions to our

favour and prejudice.

Some attention is surely required to what we can no more get rid of

than we can go out of ourselves. We are creatures of prejudice; we

neither can nor ought to eradicate it; we must only regulate, it by

reason, which regulation by reason is, indeed, little more than

obliging the lesser, the focal and temporary prejudices, to give

way to those which are more durable and lasting.

He, therefore, who in his practice of portrait painting wishes to

dignify his subject, which we will suppose to be a lady, will not

paint her in the modern dress, the familiarity of which alone is

sufficient to destroy all dignity. He takes care that his work

shall correspond to those ideas and that imagination which he knows

will regulate the judgment of others, and, therefore, dresses his

figure something with the general air of the antique for the sake

of dignity, and preserves something of the modern for the sake of

likeness. By this conduct his works correspond with those

prejudices which we have in favour of what we continually see; and

the relish of the antique simplicity corresponds with what we may

call the, more learned and scientific prejudice.

There was a statue made not long since of Voltaire, which the

sculptor, not having that respect for the prejudices of mankind

which he ought to have, has made entirely naked, and as meagre and

emaciated as the original is said to be. The consequence is what

might be expected; it has remained in the sculptor's shop, though