The summit of excellence seems to be an assemblage of contrary qualities, but mixed in such proportions, that no one part is found to counteract the other. How hard this is to be attained in every art, those only know who have made the greatest progress in their respective professions. To conclude what I have to say on this part of the subject, which I think of great importance, I wish you to understand that I do not discourage the younger Students from the noble attempt of uniting all the excellencies of art; but suggest to them, that, beside the difficulties which attend every arduous attempt, there is a peculiar difficulty in the choice of the excellencies which ought to be united. I wish to attend to this, that you may try yourselves, whenever you are capable of that trial, what you can and what you cannot do; and that, instead of dissipating your natural faculties over the immense field of possible excellence, you may choose some particular walk in which you may exercise all your powers in order that each of you may become the first in his way. If any man shall be master of such a transcendent, commanding, and ductile genius, as to enable him to rise to the highest, and to stoop to the lowest, flights of art, and to sweep over all of them, unobstructed and secure, he is fitter to give example than to receive instruction. Having said thus much on the _union_ of excellencies, I will next say something of the subordination in which various excellencies ought to be kept. I am of opinion that the ornamental style, which, in my discourse of last year, I cautioned you against considering as _principal_, may not be wholly unworthy the attention even of those who aim at the grand style, when it is properly placed and properly reduced. But this study will be used with far better effect, if its principles are employed in softening the harshness and mitigating the rigour of the great style, than if it attempt to stand forward with any pretensions of its own to positive and original excellence. It was thus Ludovico Caracci, whose example I formerly recommended to you, employed it. He was acquainted with the works both of Correggio and the Venetian painters, and knew the principles by which they produced those pleasing effects, which, at the first glance, prepossess us so much in their favour; but he took only as much from each as would embellish, but not overpower, that manly strength and energy of style which is his peculiar character. Since I have already expatiated so largely in my former discourse, and in my present, upon the _styles_ and _characters_ of Painting, it will not be at all unsuitable to my subject, if I mention to you some particulars relative to the leading principles, and capital works, of those who excelled in the _great style_, that I may bring you from abstraction nearer to practice, and, by exemplifying the positions which I have laid down, enable you to understand more clearly what I would enforce.