90 On the Fine Arts. 
vey an idea of the corruption of manners, and he has aés 
complished it without infringing the solemnity of his coms 
position. In the first picture, all is vigorous, fresh, active, 
and productive;-in the seeond, all is exhausted, decaying, 
melancholy, and wasteful. No poem, no oration, could 
have described the subject more eloquently. The historian 
who related the fall of Rome has not employed a pen more 
correct than the pencil of the artist. It is such productions 
that show the superiority of genius. It is this exquisite 
arrangement and choice of things actually existing, which 
obtains the praise of originality. 
Painting and sculpture may be described as the sensual 
class of the fine arts, and poetry and music as the intel- 
Jectual. The former address themselves at once to our 
senses. The forms which they exhibit are the representa- 
tives of things which we have seen ; but the latter address 
themselves to the mind, and call up trains of thought by 
means which bear no resemblance to those ideas, which 
they nevertheless renew. The influence of painting and 
sculpture on the mind is like that of oratory, which per- 
suades by the statement of truths. The power of poetry 
and music is felt like that of magic, which calls up spirits, 
and produces miraculous effects by the mixing of certain 
ingredients curiously culled. As the orator cannot state 
a truth justly and perspicuously, without obtaining an im- 
mediate concurrence in opinion from his auditors, so the 
painter or sculptor cannot exhibit a picture or a statue pro- 
perly executed, without obtaining the admiration of all 
spectators. But the jurisdiction of poetry and music is 
not so universal, for they are dependent on associations in 
the minds of those to whom thev address themselves. 
Truth is every where the same, but habits are local. And 
the arts of painting and sculpture are connected with 
truths, while those of music and painting are dependent on 
habits. The poet cannot produce any effect on the reader, 
unless the reader has acquired intellectual associations which 
resemble those of the poet. There must be a general cast of 
mind common to them beth. In the same manuer, musie 
will produce no sentimental effect unless in particular pas- 
sages it tends to remind the hearer of sounds in nature, and 
by that remembrance to recal] the images of scenes and 
events also. 
The effeets of a local influence, similar to that which has 
produced the different styles of architecture, is perceivable 
1n the poetry of all nations; or, in other words, national cir- 
cumstances have produccd national habits of thinking, and 
thereby 
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