ties, though inseparable from all divine works, are yet suffered to
exist in such varieties of degree, that their most limited manifestation
shall, in opposition to their most abundant, act as a foil or contrary,
just as we conceive of cold as contrary to heat, though the most extreme
cold we can produce or conceive is not inconsistent with an unknown
amount of heat in the body.

Sec. 12. How distinguishable from false taste.

Our purity of taste, therefore, is best tested by its universality, for
if we can only admire this thing or that, we may be sure that our cause
for liking is of a finite and false nature. But if we can perceive
beauty in everything of God's doing, we may argue that we have reached
the true perception of its universal laws. Hence, false taste may be
known by its fastidiousness, by its demands of pomp, splendor, and
unusual combination, by its enjoyment only of particular styles and
modes of things, and by its pride also, for it is forever meddling,
mending, accumulating, and self-exulting, its eye is always upon itself,
and it tests all things around it by the way they fit it. But true
taste is forever growing, learning, reading, worshipping, laying its
hand upon its mouth because it is astonished, casting its shoes from off
its feet because it finds all ground holy, lamenting over itself and
testing itself by the way that it fits things. And it finds whereof to
feed, and whereby to grow, in all things, and therefore the complaint so
often made by young artists that they have not within their reach
materials, or subjects enough for their fancy, is utterly groundless,
and the sign only of their own blindness and inefficiency; for there is
that to be seen in every street and lane of every city, that to be felt
and found in every human heart and countenance, that to be loved in
every road-side weed and moss-grown wall, which in the hands of faithful
men, may convey emotions of glory and sublimity continual and exalted.

Sec. 13. The danger of a spirit of choice.

Let therefore the young artist beware of the spirit of choice,[10] it is
an insolent spirit at the best and commonly a base and blind one too,
checking all progress and blasting all power, encouraging weaknesses,
pampering partialities, and teaching us to look to accidents of nature
for the help and the joy which should come from our own hearts. He draws
nothing well who thirsts not to draw _every_thing; when a good painter
shrinks, it