libraries, which the townships have also imitated: where the population
was insufficient to establish a large collection of books, the
neighbouring families formed themselves into societies for procuring the
popular publications. But in these arrangements for cultivating the powers
of the understanding, no provision was made, during the reign of George
the Second, for improving the faculties of taste. The works of which the
libraries then consisted, treated of useful and practical subjects. It was
the policy of the Quakers to make mankind wiser and better; and they
thought that, as the passions are the springs of all moral evil when in a
state of excitement, whatever tends to awaken them is unfavourable to that
placid tenour of mind which they wished to see diffused throughout the
world. This notion is prudent, perhaps judicious; but works of imagination
may be rendered subservient to the same purpose. Every thing in
Pennsylvania was thus unpropitious to the fine arts. There were no cares
in the bosoms of individuals to require public diversions, nor any
emulation in the expenditure of wealth to encourage the ornamental
manufactures. In the whole Christian world no spot was apparently so
unlikely to produce a painter as Pennsylvania. It might, indeed, be
supposed, according to a popular opinion, that a youth, reared among the
concentrating elements of a new state, in the midst of boundless forests,
tremendous waterfalls, and mountains whose summits were inaccessible to
"the lightest foot and wildest wing," was the most favourable situation
to imbibe the enthusiasm either of poetry or of painting, if scenery and
such accidental circumstances are to be regarded as every thing, and
original character as nothing. But it may reasonably be doubted if ever
natural scenery has any assignable influence on the productions of genius.
The idea has probably arisen from the impression which the magnificence of
nature makes on persons of cultivated minds, who fall into the mistake of
considering the elevated emotions arising in reality from their own
associations, as being naturally connected with the objects that excite