be said that the tongue of poetry is occasionally
silent, and the hand of painting sometimes stayed; but this seems not to
affect the ever-living principle which I claim as their characteristic.
They are heard and seen again in their season, as the birds and flowers
are at the coming of spring; and assert their title to such immortality
as the things of earth may claim. It is true that the poetry of
barbarous nations is rude, and their attempts at painting uncouth; yet
even in these we may recognise the foreshadowings of future excellence,
and something of the peculiar character which, in happier days, the
genius of the same tribe is to stamp upon worthier productions. The
future Scott, or Lawrence, or Chantrey, may be indicated afar-off in the
barbarous ballads, drawings, or carvings, of an early nation. Coarse
nature and crude simplicity are the commencement, as elevated nature and
elegant simplicity are the consummation of art.

"When the Spaniards invaded the palaces of Chili and Peru, they found
them filled with works of art. Cook found considerable beauty of drawing
and skill of workmanship in the ornamented weapons and war-canoes of the
islanders of the South Sea; and in the interior recesses of India,
sculptures and paintings, of no common merit, are found in every
village. In like manner, when Caesar landed among the barbarians of
Britain, he found them acquainted with arts and arms; and his savage
successors, the Saxons, added to unextinguishable ferocity a love of
splendour and a rude sense of beauty, still visible in the churches
which they built, and the monuments which they erected to their princes
and leaders. All those works are of that kind called ornamental: the
graces of true art, the truth of action and the dignity of sentiment are
wanting; and they seem to have been produced by a sort of mechanical
process, similar to that which creates figures in arras. Art is, indeed,
of slow and gradual growth; like the oak, it is long of growing to
maturity and strength. Much knowledge of colour, much skill of hand,
much experience in human character, and a deep sense of light and shade,
have to be acquired, to enable the pencil to embody the conceptions of
genius. The artist has to seek for all this in the accumulated mass of
professional knowledge: which time has gathered for his instruction, and
with his best wisdom, and his happiest fortune, he can only add a little
more information to the common stock, for