HAMPDEN SOCIETY. 127 



and would require little demonstration, to show the intimate 

 dependence of progress and perfection, in manufactures and the 

 mechanic arts, on an educated public taste It might strike the 

 coarse calico-printer, the weaver of coarse shawls, the uphol- 

 sterer, and plain cabinet-maker, as a sentimental prescription to 

 bid him, or them, go and discipline their skill and taste by an 

 attentive study of the forms and illustrations of the ancient 

 schools of art. Yet they will readily admit that superiority in 

 design is a grand point gained to every tradesman, and every 

 artisan, in winning the monopoly of the market. But, admitting 

 this, they admit the whole. 



The true ideal of design is a classic ideal; the same now — 

 and if so now, we see not why it will not always be the same — 

 which was developed four thousand years ago, in all the exquisite 

 forms, proportions, and harmonies, of Egyptian art ; the same 

 ideal which afterwards sailed down the Nile, and assumed new 

 embodiment on every promontory which looked out upon the 

 iEgean or Adriatic. It is true that fashion, now and then when 

 extravagance runs high, may grow erratic, and for a time greatly 

 diverge from the elder dispensation of the true beauty in design — 

 but, after all its perturbations, it will at length resume its proper 

 orbit, and will become, what fashion really is, a revolution of 

 taste about the true ideal of ancient classic art. Thus, in ar- 

 chitecture, no rational artist presumes to set up for a purely Na- 

 tive American school. It is true we sometimes see a caricature 

 of art, the gregarious order, if we may so speak, in which Ionic, 

 Corinthian and Doric meet in grotesque union with Barbarian, 

 Scythian and Hebrew, or whatever other order there may be 

 under the* sun. Yet, we hardly need say, that a nondescript 

 order like this can never become a prevailing style, — scarcely, 

 even, a transitory fashion. A man may live awhile in such a 

 motley species of monument ; but he never can really feel com- 

 fortable there. It is, then, by a study of the ancient masters, 

 and a contemplation of the ancient models, that the true ideal 

 of architectural art is attained or approached, and this attain- 

 ment or approach depends on a more systematic and universal 

 education of the public taste. 



There is no nation, perhaps, where this public taste has bet- 



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