The effect of this kind of encouragement on the arts was great, is manifest, and need be but slightly mentioned: yet, perhaps, may appear the more striking from contrasting it with some practices of more modern times. In them the first city in the world has disgraced itself with all who have eyesight, by employing to erect its most expensive building[n] an architect _because the man was a citizen_: and, in more countries of Europe than one, statues and paintings are exhibited as commemorative of illustrious public deeds, where contorsion and extravagance, where flutter and glare, form the predominant characters; but they dishonour those countries, on account of the artists engaged to execute them being employed because they were the favourites of despots, the flatterers of titled harlots, or the relations of directors; whilst men of the first talents and merit in their profession were pining in indigence and obscurity, unnoticed and unfriended. The consequences of this latter conduct none will say that we have reason to boast of from the superlative excellence of modern art; but what has been felt from it may readily induce us to believe how essentially its direct opposite must have promoted the progress of the arts in Greece. [Footnote n: The Mansion House of London.] The vast sums expended by the Grecian states on their public monuments and their public works (vast, indeed, when the comparative value of money then and now is considered), tended much to assist the progress of the arts, and to aid their high improvement. For, though we have unquestionable reason to believe that the sordid motive of private profit was not the first principle in the minds of those great artists who have immortalized their names by their works, yet without a certain liberality of expence their ideas could not have been realized, their works could not have been executed; and that liberality they found limited commonly by nothing but the public means, and often not even by them. We know from the gravest and clearest authorities with what lavish expenditure scenic representations were exhibited at Athens, with what unbounded magnificence her temples, her tribunals, her porticoes were decorated: we equally well know the splendor of Corinth, a near neighbouring city; the incalculable price of its paintings, the inestimable value of its statues, and that from the coalesced mass of its molten metals there arose, at its destruction, a compound more highly prized by the Romans than gold. The other principal cities were alike studious of embellishment, alike emulous of ornament, and in various proportions enjoyed them according to the circumstances of time and situation: but Delphi and Olympia, the grand seats of the national religion and the national games, concentered in themselves each choicest production of genius, each happiest effort of art, each transcendent display of excellence; amassed with a judgment that delighted, with a