OBSERVATIONS ON SCULPTURE. 465 
enquiry, both by philosophers and by artists; and 
these have arrived at different conclusions re- 
specting them. Some have resolved the emotion 
of Taste, directly into an original law of our na- 
ture ; which supposes a sense or senses, by which 
the qualities of beauty and sublimity are perceived 
and felt as their appropriate objects ; and conclude 
therefore that the genuine object of the Arts of 
Taste, is to discover and to imitate those qualities 
in every subject, which the prescription of nature 
has thus made, essentially, either beautiful or 
sublime. 
To this class belong the theories of Hogarth, 
of the Abbe Winkleman, and perhaps the theory 
in its last result, of Sir Joshua Reynolds. It is the 
species of hypothesis, which is naturally resorted 
to by all artists and amateurs—by those whose 
habits of thought lead them to attend more to the 
causes of their emotions, than to the nature of the 
emotions themselves. — 
The second class of hypotheses arises from the 
opposite view of the subject. It is that which 
resists the idea of any new or peculiar sense, 
distinct from the common principles of our nature; 
which supposes some one known or acknowledged 
3N 
