nature: like that extraordinary work, they are at once the amusement of childhood and ignorance, and the delight, instruction, and admiration, of the highest and most cultivated minds.

It is not, however, to be supposed, that theory and observation alone will enable us to judge either of pictures or of nature, with the same skill as those, who join to the practical knowledge of their art, habitual reflection on its principles, and its productions; between such artists, and the mere lover of painting, there will always be a sufficient difference to justify, the remark of Cicero:* but by means of the

* There is an anecdote of Salvator Rosa, which shews the very just and natural opinion that painters of eminence entertain of their superior judgment with regard to their own art: it is also highly characteristic of the lively, impetuous manner of the artist of whom it is related, and whose words might no less justly be applied to real ob

study which I have so earnestly recommended, we may greatly diminish the immense distance that exists between the eye of a first rate painter, and that of a man who has never thought on the subject. Were it, indeed,, possible that, a painter of great and general excellence could at once bestow on such a man,-not his power of imitating, but of distinguishing and feeling the effects and combinations of form, colour, and light and shadow, it would hardly be too much to assert that a new appearance of things, a new world would suddenly be opened to him; and the bestower might preface the miraculous gift, with the words in which

jects, than to the imitation of them. Salvator Rosa, essendogli mostrata una singolar pittura da un dilettante, che insiememente in estremo la lodava; egli, con un di quei suoi soliti gesti spiritosi esclamò; O pensa quel che tu diresti, se tu la vedessi con gli occhi di Salvator Rosa!

Venus addresses her son, when she removes

the mortal film from his

eyes.

Aspice, namque omnem quæ nunc obducta tuenti
Mortales hebetat visus tibi, et humida circum

IN this edition, the reader will find some considerable additions; but the chief difference is in the arrangement, which I am very conscious, was in many parts extremely defective. Several of the chapters in the first volume are entirely new modelled; and in the second, a great deal of new arrangement has taken place, especially in the middle part of the last Essay. Those readers only (should there be any such) who may have the curiosity to compare the present with former b

VOL. I.

editions, can judge of the pains that the new modelling has cost me: but I shall think them well bestowed, if I should be less open to those criticisms, which must have presented themselves to every reader of a methodical turn of mind. Another alteration, which I trust will be thought. an improvement, is that of throwing the greater part of the notes to the end of the volumes. One note, of much greater length than I could have wished, is added to the second volume, in consequence of a very pointed attack from my friend Mr. Knight, in the second edition of the Analytical Inquiry; it is indeed almost a controversial dissertation on the temple of Vesta, usually called the Sybill's temple, at Tivoli I am persuaded, however, that I have made no small amends for the tediousness of controversy, by some very curious information I received on the subject,