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couragement of the fine arts; and raised them to a pitch 

 of excellence, which has not been surpassed, either by the 

 former, or succeeding ages. If the court of Augustus was 

 the residence of all that was excellent in the fine arts; the 

 taste and patronage of the sovereign, and some remains of 

 the spirit of freedom concurred, and produced a constel- 

 lation of admirable men, that Avill render the Augustan age 

 proverbial, and the wonder of latest time. The genius of 

 the heroic Odenatus, and, still more, of the accomplished 

 and philosophical Zenobia, raised, in the midst of deserts, 

 a stupendous monument of industry, arts, and magnifi- 

 cence, where the classical genius seemed to be revived, in 

 works that rivalled the sublime conceptions of ancient 

 Greece. The race of enliohtened sovereigns of Persia loved 

 the Muses, and encouraged the bards of their country, by 

 their munificence, to such admirable exertions, as place 

 the poetry of the East nearly on an equal footing with 

 that of ancient Greece. These, and some other similar in- 

 stances, of which we shall speak more at large hereafter, 

 are bright examples. But they are only exceptions, aris- 

 ing from the peculiar personal character of the individuals, 

 ruling at the time; or from the influence of antecedent free- 

 dom, not yet worn out, but continuing to operate still on 

 the general mind; which do not invalidate the abstract posi- 

 tion, that arbitrary governments are alike unfriendly to all 

 arts and sciences ; and that the fine arts have a necessary 

 connexion with particular forms of government, are depen- 

 dent 



