He compliments the Academy upon the ability of the professors, speaks with diffidence of his power as a writer, (the world has in this respect done him justice;) but that he had come not unprepared upon the subject of art, having reflected much upon his own and the opinions of others. He found in the art many precepts and rules, not reconcilable with each other. "To clear away those difficulties and reconcile those contrary opinions, it became necessary to distinguish the greater truth, as it may be called, from the lesser truth; the larger and more liberal idea of nature from the more narrow and confined: that which addresses itself to the imagination, from that which is solely addressed to the eye. In consequence of this discrimination, the different branches of our art to which those different truths were referred, were perceived to make so wide a separation, and put on so new an appearance, that they seemed scarcely to have proceeded from the same general stock. The different rules and regulations which presided over each department of art, followed of course; every mode of excellence, from the grand style of the Roman and Florentine schools down to the lowest rank of still life, had its due weight and value--fitted to some class or other; and nothing was thrown away. By this disposition of our art into classes, that perplexity and confusion, which I apprehend every artist has at some time experienced from the variety of styles, and the variety of excellence with which he is surrounded, is, I should hope, in some measure removed, and the student better enabled to judge for himself what peculiarly belongs to his own particular pursuit." Besides the practice of art, the student must think, and speculate, and consider "upon what ground the fabric of our art is built." An artist suffers throughout his whole life, from uncertain, confused, and erroneous opinions. We are persuaded there would be fewer fatal errors were these Discourses more in the hands of our present artists--"Nocturnâ versate manu, versate diurnâ."--An example is given of the mischief of erroneous opinions. "I was acquainted at Rome, in the early part of my life, with a student of the French Academy, who appeared to me to possess all the qualities requisite to make a great artist, if he had suffered his taste and feelings, and I may add even his prejudices, to have fair play. He saw and felt the excellences of the great works of art with which we were surrounded, but lamented that there was not to be found that nature which is so admirable in the inferior schools,--and he supposed with Felebien, Du Piles, and other theorists, that such an union of different excellences would be the perfection of art. He was not aware that the narrow idea of nature, of which he lamented the absence in the works of those great artists, would have destroyed the grandeur of the general ideas which he admired, and which was indeed the cause of his admiration.