Iiifliience of Employers on Art. 9 



The square root is best for ascertaining the length of rafters, 

 &c. Trigonometry is useful for determining the heights of 

 trees. This last object is easily effected with a quadrant. To 

 prove the correctness of this mode, you may take -the height of 

 a tree while it is being felled ; and if the ground is nearly level, 

 and your calculation correct, you may stand at such a distance 

 from the root of the tree as that it may fall exactly at your feet. 

 A cube or block of any kind, 3 ft. in length, as much in breadth, 

 and the same in thickness, is well known to contain twenty-seven 

 cubic feet; but one of half the dimensions, that is, 18 in. on 

 the side of the cube, contains only 3 ft. 4 in. and 6 parts. 



While acts of measurement are fresh in the memory, figures 

 of superficies and solids should be drawn, to any convenient 

 scale, in a book. Let the objects be such as gardens, walls, 

 square and irregularly bounded fields, circles and ovals, plants 

 ations, and sheets of water, &c. ; trees, logs, blocks of stone, 

 cones, excavations of ditches, sunk dikes, &c. ; embankments 

 and dunghills. These delineations should be marked with 

 dotted lines where the dimensions are taken ; and these noted in 

 figures. The computations by the different rules should be 

 given at length under each representation. Transverse sections 

 of ditches and embankments should be shown ; together with 

 the nature of the soil, and the expense of cutting the one and 

 erecting the other per cubic yard. Such a book will be found 

 useful, especially when anything about to be measured has 

 escaped the memory. 



Thainston, Nov. 1833. 



Art. III. On the Influence exercised hy the Employers of Artists on 

 Art. By Calycanthus. 



In some of the best modern specimens of the fine arts, whe- 

 ther painting, sculpture, architecture, or landscape-gardening, 

 we meet with incongruities and blemishes, which surprise us the 

 more from the general excellence of the performance ; and make 

 the common observer wonder that minds which could soar so 

 high should fall into errors which are too striking for even a 

 very inferior capacity to overlook. I believe I. may say, with 

 truth, that, in most cases of this description, it is by no means 

 just to blame the artist. A person capable of attaining eminence 

 in art must be too deeply impressed with a sense of the general 

 fitness of things, voluntarily to commit such violations of pro- 

 priety as are sometimes apparent in works which, in most 

 respects, it is impossible to blame, and would be superfluous to 

 praise. If the fault be not with the artist, it will naturally be 



