"Is the country in which we live free from the absurdities which confound these necessary distinctions? Have we never beheld on the porticoes of palaces, public halls, or places of amusement, the skins of animals devoted to the rites of the pagan religion, or vases consecrated to the ashes of the dead, or the tears of the living? Violations of sense and character, in this respect, are daily committed. We might, with as much propriety, adorn the friezes of our palaces and theatres with the skulls and cross thigh-bones of the human figure, which are the emblems of death in every country throughout modern Europe! "I do not here allude to any particular work, nor do I speak of this want of principle as general. It is indeed impossible that I can be supposed to mean the latter; for we have among us men distinguished in the profession of architecture, who would do honour to the most refined periods of antiquity. But all are not equally chaste; and in addressing myself to the young, it is my duty to guard them against those deviations from good taste, which, without such a caution, they might conceive to be sanctioned by some degree of example. It is my wish to preserve them from the innovations of caprice and fashion, to which the public is always prone; and to assure the youth of genius, that while he continues to found the merit of his works on true principles, he will always find, notwithstanding the apparent generality of any fashion, that there is no surer way, either to fame or fortune, than by acting in art, as well as life, on those principles which have received the sanction of experience, and the approbation of the wise of all ages. "I shall now return to the consideration of painting and sculpture. "The Greeks, above all others, afford us the best and most decided proofs of the beauty arising from the philosophical consideration of the subject intended to be represented. To all their deities a fixed and appropriate character was given, from which it would have perhaps been profanity to depart. This character was the result of a careful consideration of the ideal beauty suitable to the respective attributes of the different deities. Thus in their Jupiter, Neptune, Hercules, Vulcan, Mars, and Pluto; the Apollo, Mercury, Hymen, and Cupid, and also in the goddesses Juno, Minerva, Venus, Hebe, the Nymphs and Graces; appeared a vast discrimination of character, at the same time as true an individuality as if the different forms had been the works of Nature herself.