The Fine Arts and Morals. 95 



addicted to every kind of sensual pleasure, at once refined 

 and voluptuous, licentious and effeminate (p. 236). . . . 



*"If," says Lord Orrery, in his letters from Italy, **you 

 take a view of the princes of the Medici in a group, you 

 will feel reverence and respect at one part of the picture, 

 and be struck with horror and amazement at the remain- 

 der. To revere and honour them you must consider their 

 generosity, their benefactions to men of learning, their 

 policy, and scientific institutions. To view them with 

 horror and amazement, you need only listen to the un- 

 doubted outrages of their private lives ; by which you will 

 be convinced, that few or none of the whole race were 

 endued with the softer passions of the human soul. I 

 wish that in many of their group their love was not lust ; 

 their good nature, ostentation ; their dignity, pride ; and 

 their sense, cunning." . . . 



* I wish only to disprove the affirmative of the proposi- 

 tion, and show that taste cannot reasonably be considered 

 as a moral principle of action : that, unassisted by reason 

 and good sense, it becomes subservient to the purposes of 

 folly and extravagance ; and that, connected with a base 

 and sensual heart, it unhappily serves to embellish guilt 

 and gloss over the deformity of vice (p. 238). . . .' 



Many people have reasoned on this subject, but history 

 has never been brought to corroborate the idea that taste 

 in the fine arts promotes virtue ; the finest taste seems to 

 have come to a nation when the vigour of the nerve was 

 gone, and refinement took its place along with weakness. 

 It is to be hoped that we may find refinement and strength 

 in combination — and such does exist in individuals, show- 

 ing its possibility. 



