help of meretricious ornaments, however elegant and graceful, captivates
the sensuality, as it may be called, of our taste. Thus the Roman and
Bolognian schools are reasonably preferred to the Venetian, Flemish, or
Dutch schools, as they address themselves to our best and noblest
faculties.

Well-turned periods in eloquence, or harmony of numbers in poetry, which
are in those arts what colouring is in painting, however highly we may
esteem them, can never be considered as of equal importance with the art
of unfolding truths that are useful to mankind, and which make us better
or wiser. Nor can those works which remind us of the poverty and
meanness of our nature, be considered as of equal rank with what excites
ideas of grandeur, or raises and dignifies humanity; or, in the words of
a late poet, which makes the beholder learn to venerate himself as man.

It is reason and good sense therefore which ranks and estimates every
art, and every part of that art, according to its importance, from the
painter of animated down to inanimated nature. We will not allow a man,
who shall prefer the inferior style, to say it is his taste; taste here
has nothing, or at least ought to have nothing to do with the question.
He wants not taste, but sense, and soundness of judgment.

Indeed, perfection in an inferior style may be reasonably preferred to
mediocrity in the highest walks of art. A landscape of Claude Lorraine
may be preferred to a history of Luca Jordano; but hence appears the
necessity of the connoisseur's knowing in what consists the excellence of
each class, in order to judge how near it approaches to perfection.

Even in works of the same kind, as in history painting, which is composed
of various parts, excellence of an inferior species, carried to a very