The THIRTEENTH DISCOURSE shows that art is not imitation, but is under the influence and direction of the imagination, and in what manner poetry, painting, acting, gardening, and architecture, depart from nature. However good it is to study the beauties of artists, this is only to know art through them. The principles of painting remain to be compared with those of other arts, all of them with human nature. All arts address themselves only to two faculties of the mind, its imagination and its sensibility. We have feeling, and an instantaneous judgment, the result of the experience of life, and reasonings which we cannot trace. It is safer to trust to this feeling and judgment, than endeavour to control and direct art upon a supposition of what ought in reason to be the end or means. We should, therefore, most carefully store first impressions. They are true, though we know not the process by which the first conviction is formed. Partial and after reasoning often serves to destroy that character, the truth of which came upon us as with an instinctive knowledge. We often reason ourselves into narrow and partial theories, not aware that "_real_ principles of _sound reason_, and of so much more weight and importance, are involved, and as it were lie hid, under the appearance of a sort of vulgar sentiment. Reason, without doubt, must ultimately determine every thing; at this minute it is required to inform us when that very reason is to give way to feeling." Sir Joshua again refers to the mistaken views of art, and taken too by not the poorest minds, "that it entirely or mainly depends on imitation." Plato, even in this respect, misleads by a partial theory. It is with "such a false view that Cardinal Bembo has chosen to distinguish even Raffaelle himself, whom our enthusiasm honours with the name divine. The same sentiment is adopted by Pope in his epitaph on Sir Godfrey Kneller; and he turns the panegyric solely on imitation as it is a sort of deception." It is, undoubtedly, most important that the world should be taught to honour art for its highest qualities; until this is done, the profession will be a degradation. So far from painting being imitation, he proceeds to show that "it is, and ought to be, in many points of view, and strictly speaking, no imitation at all of external nature." Civilization is not the gross state of nature; imagination is the result of cultivation, of civilization; it is to this state of nature art must be more closely allied. We must not appeal for judgment upon art to those who have not acquired the faculty to admire. The lowest style of all arts please the uncultivated. But, to speak of the unnaturalness of art--let it be illustrated by poetry, which speaks in language highly artificial, and "a construction of measured words, such as never is nor ever was used by man." Now, as there is in the human mind "a sense of congruity, coherence, and consistency," which must be