ground and data upon which, after all, taste must rely in its decisions. _Cultivation of Taste._--We have investigated, with some care, as was proposed, the nature of that power of the mind which takes cognizance of the beautiful. On the cultivation of this power, a few words must be said in this connection. Taste is an intellectual faculty, a perceptive power, a matter of judgment, and, as such, both admits and requires cultivation. No forms of mental activity depend more on education and exercise, for their full development, than that class to which we give the general name of judgment, and no form of judgment more than that which we call taste. The mind uncultivated, untrained, unused to the nice perception of the beautiful, can no more judge correctly, in matters of taste, than the mind unaccustomed to judge of the distance, magnitude, or chemical properties of bodies, can form correct decisions upon these subjects. It must be trained by art, and strengthened by exercise. It must be made familiar with the laws, and conversant with the forms of beauty. It must be taught to observe and study the beautiful, in nature and in art, to discriminate, to compare, to judge. The works in literature and in art which have received the approbation of time, and the honorable verdict of mankind, as well as the objects in nature which have commanded the admiration of the race, must become familiar, not by observation only, but by careful study. Thus may taste be cultivated. HISTORICAL SKETCH. _View of Plato._--Among the ancients, _Plato_ was, perhaps, the first to distinguish the idea of the beautiful from other kindred ideas, and to point out its affinity with the true and the good, thus recognizing in it something immutable and eternal. In making the good and the beautiful identical, however, he mistakes the true character and end of art, Previously to Plato, and even by him, art and the beautiful were treated only in connection with ethics and politics' æsthetics, as a distinct department of science, was not known to the ancients. _Of Aristotle._--_Aristotle_ has not treated of the beautiful but only of dramatic art. Poetry, he thinks, originates in the tendency to imitate, and the desire to know. Tragedy is the imitation of _the better_. Painting should represent, in like manner, not _what is_, but what _ought to be_. In this sense, may be understood his profound remark, that _poetry is more true than history_.