If the students of this Academy must be supposed to have overcome the rudiments, and to be arrived at that point from which it may be discovered whether Nature intended them for mere craftsmen or real artists, near that point, where, in the phrase of Reynolds, "genius begins and rules end," it behoves us not to mistake the mere children of necessity, or the pledges of vanity, for the real nurselings of public hope, or the future supporters of the beneficent establishment that rears them. Instruction, it is true, may put them in possession of every attainable part of the Art in a decent degree; they may learn to draw with tolerable correctness, to colour with tolerable effect, to put their figures together tolerably well, and to furnish their faces with a tolerable expression--it may not be easy for any one to pick any thing intolerably bad out of their works; but when they have done all this--and almost all may do all this, for all this may be taught--they will find themselves exactly at the point where all that gives value to Art begins--Genius, which cannot be taught--at the threshold of the Art, in a state of mediocrity. "Gods, men, and fame," says Horace, "reject mediocrity in poets." Why? Neither Poetry nor Painting spring from the necessities of society, or furnish necessaries to life; offsprings of fancy, leisure, and lofty contemplation, organs of religion and government, ornaments of society, and too often mere charms of the senses and instruments of luxury, they derive their excellence from novelty, degree, and polish. What none indispensably want, all may wish for, but few only are able to procure, acquires its value from some exclusive quality, founded on intrinsic or some conventional merit, and that, or an equal substitute, mediocrity cannot reach: hence, by suffering it to invade the province of genius and talent, we rob the plough, the shop, the loom, the school, perhaps the desk and pulpit, of a thousand useful hands. A good mechanic, a trusty labourer, an honest tradesman, are beings more important, of greater use to society, and better supporters of the state, than an artist or a poet of mediocrity. When I therefore say that it is the duty of the Academy to deter rather than to delude, I am not afraid of having advanced a paradox hostile to the progress of real Art. The capacities that time will disclose, genius and talents, cannot be deterred by the exposition of difficulties, and it is the interest of society that all else should. END OF THE SECOND VOLUME. LONDON: PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY, Dorset Street, Fleet Street. * * * * * TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES Obvious typos have been silently corrected. Idiosyncratic spellings have been left unchanged. This includes inconsistent spellings of proper names, oe ligatures and capitalisation.