On the Fine Arts. 87 
#n the chutch. Perhaps, if the theatre were entirely de- 
voted fo the exhibition of tragedies, the grave majesty of its 
portico would not be objectionable. Still, however, both 
the theatre and the cathedral are fine monuments of the 
skill of their respective architects; but they are curious €x- 
aniples of the want of that taste for propriety which is as 
Fequisite in the art of building as in the compositions of thé 
Muse: and as it has been said of the English, that they 
binld their hospitals like palaces, and their palaces like 
hospitals, it may be added that they also erect their churches 
like theatres, and their theatres like churches. 
Of ail the fine arts, architecture is not only that which 
is most easily traced to its origin in the wants of mankind, 
but that on which all the others are dependent. All the 
others when compared with architecture are only repre- 
sentative, and minister only to the gratification of those 
watts which arjse from the experience of pleasure. But 
this primeeval art is, in its rudimental state, almost as ne- 
cessary to man as food, and in its refined no less essential 
to the improvement of every other. 
Painting and sculpture are the arts which seem to have 
the greatest affinity to architecture, and most immediately 
~eonnected with its use and progress. For the origin of 
painting, we have no evidence of any such obvious instinct 
as that which led man to the art of building, and it may be 
doubted, whether it ought to be considered as an inyention 
anterior to or cozval with sculpture. 
The Greeks, with that vanity which their extraordinary 
proficiency in art and science almost justified them in as- 
suming, a vanity which is probably constitutional, as it 
exisis in them as strongly as ever, although they have no- 
thidg left of their ancestors but their vices, but the lees 
and dregs of civilization—take to themselves the honour of 
the invention of painting ; and tell us that, in particular, the 
art of portrait-painting was discovered among them by a 
girl who wag fond of a youth devoted to travelling, and 
who, to sweeten the time of his absence, delineated on the 
wall with the assistance of a lamp the profile of her lover. 
Justead however of accepting this as an historical fact, we 
ought to reflect how prone the Grecks were to allegory, and 
thas this elegant fable 1s but another way of telling us that por- 
trdit-painting was suggested by adolescent affection. 
Although Anaxagoras and Bettie hls wrote on ihe rules 
of perspective, we have no proof that the Greeks, notwith- 
standing their excellence in the delineation of objects, ever 
made any proficiency in the knowledge of perspective. We 
have no account of any landscape-painters of great eminence 
4 among 
