These advantages were unknown to our ancestors, and were reserved, among many other peculiar blessings, for their posterity. Not that genius, wit, and learning, appear to have been scarce commodities in those days; but they laid on their owner’s hands, for want of purchasers. When the Daily Advertiser, the St. James’s Evening-Post, and the Gentleman’s Magazine, were as much as they could afford to buy, many thousand hands were lying idle for want of employers, and many a strenuous and faithful subject, amply qualified, both from his talents and his virtues, for the service of his country, was shut out from the higher employments which nature had formed him for; confined, for mere want of bread, to the narrow sphere of a shop-board or a counter, or condemned perhaps for life to the sordid drudgery of some laborious handicraft trade. The times are now changed; merit is no longer in danger of pining in obscurity; the high road to wealth and fame is open to all their votaries; whether a political writer be inspired by the genuine spirit of patriotism, inflamed with a fervent zeal for the honour of his king and his country; whether he aspires to high dignities, places, pensions, or reversions; or whether he be a simple candidate for food and raiment, it is his own misfortune or fault, not the public’s, if he fails: for it is notorious to every man of common observation, that the arts and sciences, the children of genius and learning, thrive and increase in proportion to the increase of our manufactures, trade, and commerce; which enable a rich, indulgent, and munificent public to cherish, support, and honour them. The immense wealth acquired by these means within these few years, and scattered with generous profusion over the whole kingdom, is not more remarkable, nor more amazing, than the rapid progress which the arts of painting, sculpture, building, gardening, music, engraving, &c. have made in the same period. Our artists begin already to rival and surpass the most celebrated artists of Europe, and bid fair to confer on their country as much honour and renown, as those in the ages of Leo X. and Lewis XIV. did on France and Italy. Hitherto, however, they have not reached that lofty summit; being rather subordinate arts, the arts of elegance and ornament, than of real and intrinsic use: they are neither held in such general estimation, nor so liberally rewarded; and are therefore not cultivated with the same zeal and assiduity, as others of more immediate benefit and importance to society. _Excudent alii spirantia mollius aera, &c. Tu regere imperio populos Romane memento. Hæ tibi erunt artes,----_