advantages? They never had an opportunity of seeing those masterly
efforts of genius which at once kindle the whole soul, and force it into
sudden and irresistible approbation.

Raffaelle, it is true, had not the advantage of studying in an academy;
but all Rome, and the works of Michael Angelo in particular, were to him
an academy. On the site of the Capel la Sistina he immediately from a
dry, Gothic, and even insipid manner, which attends to the minute
accidental discriminations of particular and individual objects, assumed
that grand style of painting, which improves partial representation by
the general and invariable ideas of nature.

Every seminary of learning may be said to be surrounded with an
atmosphere of floating knowledge, where every mind may imbibe somewhat
congenial to its own original conceptions. Knowledge, thus obtained, has
always something more popular and useful than that which is forced upon
the mind by private precepts or solitary meditation. Besides, it is
generally found that a youth more easily receives instruction from the
companions of his studies, whose minds are nearly on a level with his
own, than from those who are much his superiors; and it is from his
equals only that he catches the fire of emulation.

One advantage, I will venture to affirm, we shall have in our academy,
which no other nation can boast. We shall have nothing to unlearn. To
this praise the present race of artists have a just claim. As far as
they have yet proceeded they are right. With us the exertions of genius
will henceforward be directed to their proper objects. It will not be as
it has been in other schools, where he that travelled fastest only
wandered farthest from the right way.