We do not mean to assert that art rose at once full-grown, as Pallas from the head of Jove. It had undoubtedly its progression; but it did not grow from an old stock; and hence it did grow and arose unimpeded and unchoked by an unwholesome exuberance, to the greatest splendour and glory. Whether there can be again any new principle which will require new inventions, it would be almost presumptuous to consider; but we do feel assured that should it be so, there will not be an adaptation of present means to it, but that the wing of oblivion must have to sweep over, overshadow, and obliterate the present multifarious form and body of art. The fine arts are not like the exact sciences, always progressing from accumulative knowledge towards their final and sure establishment of truth; on the contrary, their great truths recede further from view, as knowledge is accumulated, and practice, deteriorates by example. Science is truth to be dug out of the earth, as it were; a precious ore, not strictly ours, but by and for our use. The fine arts are in a far greater degree ours, for they are of the mind's creation; they are the product of a faculty given, indeed, but given to create and not to gather, and dig up ready-made for our purpose; they are of that faculty which has given the name to the poet, as altogether the maker. They give that to the world which it never could have received by any accumulation of fact and knowledge. Take away the individual genius, the inventive, the creating mind of the one man, the Homer, the Dante, the Shakspeare, the Michael Angelo, the Raffaelle, and the whole product is annihilated; we cannot even conceive of its existence, know of no mine wherein to dig, no facts, no knowledge out of which it can grow. That creating power may, indeed, turn all existing things to its use, all facts and all knowledge; but it commands and is not governed by them--is a power in no degree dependant on them, which would still be, though they existed not--a power which, if it exhausted worlds, would invent new for its purpose. To whom, then, are such powers given? for what purpose?--and are they of a gift deteriorated in its use and abuse? Alas! they are still of the "corruptible," and cannot, in our present state, "put on incorruption." They are, however, of the mind, which may be purified and strengthened, or corrupted and degraded.