But though I may thus dispose of the general objection from the co-existence in many cases of refinement in the arts and corrupt morals, yet this, I think, will not fully meet the objection which first arose in the minds of some, from those numerous individual instances in which men have been eminent for taste and genius, and at the same time corrupt. What, you have been ready to say, do you make of such a case as that of Byron? Now I would here make an inquiry, how far, and in what sense, those productions of genius which have a corrupt tendency are really consistent with good taste. Take the Don Juan of Byron for instance. To say nothing of principle, such a work certainly is not compatible with a correct _moral_ taste. That it is in some sense, however, a work of taste, cannot be denied; but it seems to me to be only as a splendid palace, built in a low and fetid morass, is a work of taste. The palace may be beautiful, but it was in bad taste _to set it there_. Particular rooms may be elegantly furnished, but still there comes up from the surrounding marsh a pestilential miasm, and it may be said of the atmosphere around it, as was said of that around New Orleans a few autumns since, that "all is beauty and all is death." So far therefore as these works have a corrupt tendency, they cannot be said to be in the highest sense consistent with good taste. But still it is said that corrupt men have produced works of the highest genius and of the best taste that have had no such tendency. This is granted, but it is to be accounted for from the fact that men of genius are often men of strong passions and of wayward and unbalanced minds, and from the peculiar temptations in which, as I have already said, they are placed. Taste seems to me to be, to such men, what the music of David was to Saul,--it charms away the evil spirit, but it is only for a time.