Mr. West, after a few general observations on the necessary union between moral conduct and good taste, adverts to the alleged influence which such institutions as the Royal Academy have in producing mannerism in the students, than which nothing can be more obnoxious to the progress of refined art. "But," said he, "while I am urging the advantage of freedom and nature in study to genius, let me not be misunderstood. There is no untruth in the idea that great wits are allied to great eccentricity. Genius is apt to run wild if not brought under some regulation. It is a flood whose current will be dangerous if it is not kept within proper banks. But it is one thing to regulate its impetuosity, and another very different to direct its natural courses. In every branch of art there are certain laws by which genius may be chastened; but the corrections gained by attention to these laws amputate nothing that is legitimate, pure, and elegant. Leaving these graces untouched, the schools of art have dominion enough in curbing what is wild, irregular, and absurd. "A college of art founded in this part of the world cannot be expected, like a college of literature, to lay before its young members all that may be necessary to complete their knowledge and taste. What is to be had from books may be obtained almost every where; but the books of instruction by which the artist alone can be perfected, are those great works which still remain immoveable in that part of the world, where the fine arts in modern times have been carried to their highest degree of perfection. I trust a period will come, when this Academy will be able to send the young artist, not from one spot or one seminary to another, but to gather improvement from every celebrated work of art wherever situated. But the progress and all future success of the artist must depend upon himself. He must be in love with his art or he will never excel in it. "That the arts of design were among the first suggestions vouchsafed by Heaven to mankind, is not a proposition at which any man needs to start. This truth is indeed manifested by every little child, whose first essay is to make for itself the resemblance of some object to which it has been accustomed in the nursery. "In the arts of design were conveyed the original means of communicating ideas, which the discoverers of countries show us to have been seized upon, as it were involuntarily, by all the first stages of society. Although the people were rude in knowledge and in manners, yet they were possessed of the means by which they could draw figures of things, and they could make those figures speak their purposes to others as well as to themselves. The Mexicans conversed in that way when Cortes came among them; and the savages of North America still employ the same means of communicating intelligence.