the tardy and obstructed progress of our predecessors may teach us

a shorter and easier way. The student receives at one glance the

principles which many artists have spent their whole lives in

ascertaining; and, satisfied with their effect, is spared the

painful investigation by which they come to be known and fixed.

How many men of great natural abilities have been lost to this

nation for want of these advantages? They never had an opportunity

of seeing those masterly efforts of genius which at once kindle the

whole soul, and force it into sudden and irresistible approbation.

Raffaelle, it is true, had not the advantage of studying in an

academy; but all Rome, and the works of Michael Angelo in

particular, were to him an academy. On the site of the Capella

Sistina he immediately from a dry, Gothic, and even insipid manner,

which attends to the minute accidental discriminations of

particular and individual objects, assumed that grand style of

painting, which improves partial representation by the general and

invariable ideas of nature.

Every seminary of learning may be said to be surrounded with an

atmosphere of floating knowledge, where every mind may imbibe

somewhat congenial to its own original conceptions. Knowledge,

thus obtained, has always something more popular and useful than

that which is forced upon the mind by private precepts or solitary

meditation. Besides, it is generally found that a youth more

easily receives instruction from the companions of his studies,

whose minds are nearly on a level with his own, than from those who

are much his superiors; and it is from his equals only that he

catches the fire of emulation.

One advantage, I will venture to affirm, we shall have in our

academy, which no other nation can boast. We shall have nothing to

unlearn. To this praise the present race of artists have a just

claim. As far as they have yet proceeded they are right. With us