268 PAINTING. 



the rules of his art. His skill enables him to display the j 



various scenes of nature at one view ; and by his delineation J 



of the striking effects of passion, he instantaneously affects \ 



the soul of the spectator. Silent and uniform as is the ad- J 



dress which a good picture makes to us, yet it penetrates so ] 



deeply into our aflections, as to appear to exceed the powers > 

 of eloquence. 



Painting is the most imitative of all the arts. It gives to j 



us the very forms of those, whose works of genius, or of vir- J 



tue, have commanded or won our admiration, and transmits ^ 



them from age to age, as if not life merely, but immortality j 



flowed in the colours of the artist's pencil ; or, to speak of j 



its still happier use, it preserves to us the lineaments of those ,1 



whom we love, when separated from us either by distance I 



or the t©mb. How many of the feelings, which we should I 



most regret to lose, would be lost but for this delightful art, ] 



— feelings that ennoble, by giving us the wish to imitate I 

 what was noble in the moral hero or sage, on whom we gaze, 



or that comfort us, by the imaginary presence of those whose j 



affection is the only thing dearer to us, than even our admi- ] 



ration of hcr'oism and wisdom. The value of painting will, ^ 



indeed, best be felt by those who have lost, by death, a pa- \ 



rent or much-loved friend, and who feel that they should not j 



have lost every thing, if some pictured memorial had still l 



remained, I 



Paintings, in regard to their subjects, are called historical, ' 



landscape, or portrait ; and in regard to the painters, they I 



are divided into schools or countries ; as the Italian, Ger- 1j 



man, French, English, and other schools. Each of the ^ 



schools has treated the practice of painting in its peculiar ^ 



manner, and each with exquisite beauty and admirable ef- 1 



feet. The great component parts of painting are, invention, , 



or the power of conceiving the materials proper to be intro- i 



duced into a picture ; composition, or the power of arranging l 



them ; design, or the power of delineating them ; the manage- ] 



ment of lights and shades ; and the colouring. Invention j 



consists principally in three things, the choice of a subject ' 



properly within the scope of the art ; the seizure of the most 1 



striking and energetic moment of time for representation ; : 



and the discovery and selection of such objects, and such ; 



probable incidental circumstances, as, combined together, ^ 



may best tend to develope the story, or augment the interest i 



