"The discourse which I am about to deliver, according to usual custom on the return of this day, must be considered as addressed more immediately to those among the students, who have made so much progress in art, as to be masters of the human figure, of perspective, and of those other parts of study, which I have heretofore recommended as the elements of painting and sculpture; and who are therefore about to enter on the higher paths of professional excellence. It will consequently be my object, now, to show how that excellence is to be attained; and this will best be done, as I conceive, by showing how it has been attained by others, in whom that excellence has been most distinguished in the ancient and modern world. By pursuing the principles on which they moved, you have the best encouragement in their illustrious example, while, by neglecting those principles, you can have no more reason to hope for such success as they met with, than you can think of reaching a distant land, without road or compass to direct your steps. "The ground which I shall propose for your attention is this--to investigate those philosophical principles on which all truth of character is founded, and by which that sublime attainment, the highest refinement in art, and without which every thing else is merely mechanical, may be brought to a decided point, in all the variety by which it is distinguished through the animated world. "On this ground, and on this alone, rose Phidias and Apelles to the celebrity which they held among the Greeks; and among the Italians, Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Raphael, Titian, Correggio, and some others, who became the completest models in sculpture and painting. Their predecessors, indeed, in both countries, had for a considerable time been preparing the way, but not having equally studied the best means, or those means not having been equally before them, it was reserved of course for the great characters I have mentioned, to unite philosophical with professional truth, and to exhibit to the world in their works the standards of style. From the same source arose another consequence, ever worthy and pleasing to be mentioned;--the exhibition of those perfections was always accompanied by that ardent patronage, which not only cheered their minds, and invigorated their powers, but has left a glory on their country, which no subsequent events have been able to obliterate, and which never will be obliterated in any country where the sublimity of art, involving the most refined embellishments of civilized life, is cherished by those who are in a capacity to cherish it.