President and Council of the Royal Academy, 23 



part." But let us see what advantages of this kind France 

 possesses, or islikelv to be possessed of, in comparison with 

 Italy. 



An university or school in which all nations are to study 

 the arts of design should possess all possible assistance to 

 the progress and exercise of pain-ting, sculpture, and archi- 

 tecture. This supposes the greatest number and variety of 

 the most excellent works of Grecian sculpture, groups, sta- 

 tues, busts, and bas-reliefs, in marble and bronze; as like- 

 wise gems and medals, of paintings, the greatest number 

 and variety of .antient Greek or Roman paintings and mo- 

 saics ; as also the best of those works winch have been pro- 

 duced since the revival of the arts. This university should 

 be situated in a country abounding with buildings erected 

 from the remotest antiquity, through the barbarous ages 

 down to the revival of the Grecian orders in the fifteenth 

 century. Here the student of architecture should see and 

 study the palaces, temples, basilicos, theatres, amphithea-- 

 tres, baths, aqueducts, fountains, tombs, chapels, altars, 

 sarcophagi, and whatever eke of public or private building 

 or decoration might enable him to make the most profound 

 and perfect studies in his art : the painter and sculptor 

 should be excited by the objects to a habit of copying fine 

 living models and draperies.: they should have easy access 

 to able masters for instruction. The local situation of such 

 a school should be connected with the classical history of 

 the works which it contains, in order that the natural con- 

 nection between the arts of design and the belles lettres may 

 he preserved. The very climate itself should be favourable 

 to grand forms of countenance ana* person, to the limbs 

 being more uncovered than in colder countries ; to careless 

 and variegated groups and actions, and flowing draperies. 

 This school of art should likewise lie in the high road to 

 Greece and Egypt, Syria, Balbec, and Palmyra, to enable 

 such as would study art and science, and their spurce, to 

 make the easier journeys into those countries. Now, as 

 Italy is the only country in the world that has all these ad- 

 vantages, it is evident that is the university in which all 

 nations must study the arts of design. 



France, on the contrary, wants them all in common with 

 her neighbours. In France there is no series of Greek and 

 Roman buildings for architects to study ; in France there is 

 no collection of antique sculpture worth notice; nay, in 

 this respect, perhaps, England, Saxony, Prussia, Russia, 

 and Spain, excel her ; for in those countries there are very 

 £ne collections of antient sculpture, notwithstanding that 



B 4 all 



