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SIXTH MEETING. 



Royal Institution. — January 12, 1852. 



THOMAS SANSOM, Esq., in the chair. 



Mr. Thomas Avison, F.S.A., was elected an Ordinary Member. 



Mr. Samuel Huggins read the second part of his Paper, of which 

 the following is an abstract : — 



ON FINE ART : ITS NATURE, RELATIONS, AND 

 TENDENCIES. 



In introducing the subject, he observed, that the arts usually brought 

 under the denomination of "fine arts," in England, were painting, 

 sculpture, architecture, and engraving ; but that, in associating poetry, 

 music, and eloquence wdth them, the French had made a wiser classifi- 

 cation. Poetry was common to both literature and art, and inseparably 

 interwove them. Poetry was the art-spirit, and it might be said to 

 manifest itself in a literaiy, as well as in a pictorial, sculptural, or 

 architectural foim. 



In the examination of art, he proposed to inquire, firstly, its nature — 

 what art was ; secondly, its position with regard to the more exact and 

 practical developments of the human intellect — or its relation to science ; 

 thirdly, its tendencies — what in its present state it does. 



True art (in its full acceptation) was an expression of our whole Hfe, 

 of all nature and human history and experience ; and when we gazed on 

 any real work, whether it were architecture, sculpture or painting, or 

 whether Egyptian or Indian, Roman or Gothic, we beheld a reflection of 

 nature, — its effect upon the human mind imder the varied circumstances 

 of life. Art was nature, not with corrections and additions, but with 

 notes and annotations ; and as it was nature stamped with the signet of 

 mind, it was in the highest sense nature, — an union of the physical and 

 the spiritual. 



The various branches of art, he considered, were alike the discern- 

 ments of the spirit, or higher intellect, and their works were alike the 

 result of that spiritual discernment. It was the living presence of the 

 art-soul in the expressed result or performance that stamped it a work 



