ART 



ART 



a degree of excellence, generally an- 

 swerable to their civilization and opulence. 

 In every nation where the arts have 

 flourished, the artists have made but rude 

 essays, and by degrees they have been 

 nurtured up to excellence, except in 

 such instances where they have been 

 transplanted, as from Greece to Rome. 

 It is universally acknowledged respecting 

 statuary and architecture, that ancient 

 Greece has produced the best artists in 

 the world ; their works, which have es- 

 caped the ravages of time, are the stand- 

 ing monuments of their fame, and are 

 still considered as the models of perfec- 

 tion ; there is, however, an uncertainty, 

 whether their painters were equally skill- 

 ed with their statuaries. With some 

 reason, many judicious persons have sup- 

 posed they were not ; while others con- 

 tend, that so much excellence produced 

 in one branch must have contemporary 

 artists, who would excel in the other also. 

 While we cannot doubt of the genius of the 

 Grecian artists, and of their ability to pro- 

 duce works of excellence, yet it may not 

 be allowed, that this argument will be 

 found to be so conclusive as it may at first 

 appear, since Chinese and Indian models 

 are found in a more perfect state than 

 either their drawings or paintings. When 

 the Goths overran Italy, the arts were de- 

 stroyed ; and, with Grecian architecture, 

 painting and sculpture lay in one common 

 grave forgotten, until they revived under 

 some artists in the twelfth and thirteenth 

 centuries, who ought not to be named as 

 artists, but for the succeeding effects to 

 which their efforts prepared the way, 

 and in a short time after produced Mi- 

 chael Angelo, Raphael, Correggio, Titian, 

 Algardi, Bernini, Sec. painters, sculptors, 

 and architects, to whose works the living 

 artists are almost as much indebted, as 

 these illustrious characters were to the 

 ancient monuments they dug from the 

 ruins of old Rome. See AnTs,/n<;. 



ARTOCARPUS, in botany, bread-fruit 

 tree. Class, Monoecia Monandria. Male 

 flowers, cal. none ; ament cylindrical, all 

 covered with florets ; cor. to each two 

 petals, oblong, concave, blunt, villose ; 

 stam. filaments single, within each corolla, 

 filiform, the length of the corolla ; anther 

 oblong. Female flowers, on the same 

 tree : cal. and corolla none ; pist. germs 

 very many ; connected into a globe, hex- 

 angulur styk to each, filiform; stigma 

 single, or two, capillary, revolute ; per. 

 fruit ovate, globular, compound, muricate; 

 seed for each germ solitary, oblong, co- 

 vered with a pulpy aril, placed on an 

 ovate receptacle. There are but two 



species : 1. A. incisa, which is the thicks 

 ness of a man, and upwards of 40 feet 

 high : the trunk is upright ; the wood 

 soft, smooth, and yellowish ; the inner 

 bark white, composed of a net of stifiish 

 fibres, the outer bark smooth, but full of 

 chinks, pale ash-colour, with small tuber- 

 cles thinly scattered over it. Wherever the 

 tree is wounded, it pours out a glutinous 

 milky liquor. The branches form an am- 

 ple almost globular head; the lower ones, 

 which are the longest, spring from the 

 trunk, 10 or 12 feet above the ground, 

 speading almost horizontally, scattered, 

 and in a sort of whorl ; twigs ascending, 

 bearing flowers and fruit at their ends. 

 In captain Cook's voyage it is observed, 

 that the bread-fruit tree is about the size 

 of a middling oak ; its leaves are fre- 

 quently a foot and a half long, oblong, 

 deeply sinuated, like those of the fig-tree, 

 which they resemble in consistence and 

 colour, and in exuding a milky juice 

 when broken. The fruit is the size and 

 shape of a child's head, and the surface is 

 reticulated not much unlike a truflfte ; it 

 is covered with a thin skin, and has a core 

 about as big as the handle of a small 

 knife ; the eatable part lies between the 

 skin and core ; it is as white as snow, 

 and of the consistence of new bread. It 

 must be roasted before it is eaten, being 

 first divided into three or four parts ; its 

 taste is insipid, with a slight sweetness, 

 somewhat resembling that of the crumb 

 of wheaten bread mixed with the Jeru- 

 salem artichoke. The fruit not being in 

 season all the year, there is a method of 

 supplying this defect, by reducing it to 

 sour paste, called makie ; and besides 

 this, cocoa nuts, bananas, plantains, and a 

 great variety of other fruits, come in aid 

 of it. This tree not only supplies food, 

 but also clothing, for the bark is stripped 

 off the suckers and formed into a kind of 

 cloth. To procure the fruit for food costs 

 the Otaheiteans no trouble or labour but 

 climbing a tree ; which, though it should 

 not indeed shoot up spontaneously, yet, 

 as captain Cook observes, if a man plant 

 ten trees in his life time, he will as com- 

 pletely fulfil his duty to his own and fu- 

 ture generations, as the native of our less 

 temperate climate can do by ploughing 

 in the cold winter, and reaping in the 

 summer's heat, as often as these seasons 

 return ; even if, after he has procured 

 bread for his present household, he 

 should convert a surplus into money, and 

 lay it up for his children. But where the 

 trees are once introduced in a favourable 

 soil and climate, so far from being obliged 

 to renew them by planting, it seems pro- 



