highroad. This fact becoming known to a man who had his private reasons for
committing murder, at the third milestone from Königsberg, he waited for
his "intended," who came up to time as duly as a mail-coach. But for an
accident, Kant was a dead man. However, on considerations of "morality," it
happened that the murderer preferred a little child, whom he saw playing in
the road, to the old transcendentalist: this child he murdered; and thus it
happened that Kant escaped. Such is the German account of the matter; but
my opinion is--that the murderer was an amateur, who felt how little would
be gained to the cause of good taste by murdering an old, arid, and adust
metaphysician; there was no room for display, as the man could not possibly
look more like a mummy when dead, than he had done alive.

Thus, gentlemen, I have traced the connection between philosophy and our
art, until insensibly I find that I have wandered into our own era. This I
shall not take any pains to characterize apart from that which preceded
it, for, in fact, they have no distinct character. The seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, together with so much of the nineteenth as we have
yet seen, jointly compose the Augustan age of murder. The finest work of
the seventeenth century is, unquestionably, the murder of Sir Edmondbury
Godfrey, which has my entire approbation. At the same time, it must be
observed, that the quantity of murder was not great in this century, at
least amongst our own artists; which, perhaps, is attributable to the want
of enlightened patronage. _Sint Mæcenates, non deerunt, Flacce, Marones_.
Consulting Grant's "Observations on the Bills of Mortality," (4th edition,
Oxford, 1665,) I find, that out of 229,250, who died in London during one
period of twenty years in the seventeenth century, not more than eighty-six
were murdered; that is, about four three-tenths per annum. A small number
this, gentlemen, to found an academy upon; and certainly, where the
quantity is so small, we have a right to expect that the quality should be
first-rate. Perhaps it was; yet, still I am of opinion that the best artist