A HISTORICAL ESSAY ON TASTE. 



be to give the head a shape to suit me; and this shaping of heads ought to be done while 

 the tree is young. 



In our fine climate, pruning may safely be done in almost any month in the year, but 

 wounds inflicted on trees in the summer, heal much sooner than at any other time. 



Robert Harwell. 



Cottage Hill, Mobile, Nov. 9, 1&50. 



A HISTORICAL ESSAY ON TASTE. 



BY H. T. BRAITIIEWAITE.* 



In approaching a subject so varied and extensive as the Origin and Progress of Taste in 

 Art, now principally in Architecture, it would not, I think, be unbecoming to request in- 

 dulgence for the errors which may probably be made by one who does not belong 

 to the profession, but who, nevertheless, perceiving in architecture a great and beautiful 

 art, is desirous of devoting attention to it, for the sake of improving, by its means, his 

 own knowledge and understanding of the principles of art. These — in nearly all the oc- 

 cupations of the muses — these fundamental principles are, in all arts, nearly or precisely 

 similar. It is from the right comprehension of them, to anticipate, that taste, as we un- 

 derstand it now, may be said mainly to arise. In architecture, in poetry, in painting, in 

 sculpture, it is alike necessary to observe those axioms of construction, execution and 

 adornment which have been declared by common concurrence to be inviolable, and with- 

 out observance of which it is impossible to produce a complete work. I say that unity of 

 conception, regard of general effect, justness of proportion, constructive solidity, and the 

 like, are indispensably necessary to the creation of anything which, by the air of nature 

 it shall wear, shall communicate a just idea to the mind, answer the imagination in our 

 presence, or haunt the memory in our absence, with the shape, the color, the sense, or 

 sound of beauty, or with all of them combined. To speak generally, the violation of any 

 of the primary principles would show an incompleteness or absence of taste. If we con- 

 sider the subject more closely, taste is the result of a discriminative power of the intellect, 

 which decides, in several or more objects, and consequently ideas of them, on that which 

 most perfectly answers to her idea of, for instance, beauty — the effect of certain constitu- 

 ent causes, such as proportion, harmony, &c.; to her idea of, for instance, grandeur re- 

 sulting from size, height, and the like, — an idea, I think, in some degree natural to man; 

 if so, doubtless implanted by the Creator, and showing that the print of the Divine hand 

 is left as well in the mind of man, as in all that it moulded, and it moulded all. It is pro- 

 bable, however, that the idea exists naturally in a ver}^ slight degree — the mind improving 

 it to an observable point by its own almost unconscious observance of nature. Some 

 wholly reject the notion of any innate ideas; the learned are divided on this point; the 

 definition, too, of abstract notions is at all times difficult. 



To resume. According to the experience of the mind by observation, arising from the 

 multiplicity of objects observed and compared, will the power of justly discriminating be 

 developed, always provided that the principles of art, which are natural, be allowed to 

 guide; and the understanding so educated will acquire, as it were, a wisdom with respect 

 to form, color, and all other external attributes of nature, and, imitatively, of art. 

 Whether any may justly argue that that quality, which we call taste, originally existed 

 as such in the human mind, is, therefore, more than doubtful; but there was doubtless 

 innate in it an admiration of the works of nature, a sense of connection with created 



* From the Lomlou Builder. 



No. 11. 2 



