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qu'Athènes chérit ou vénère. Sur la frise du Parthenon vous représenterez la ville de Minerve celebrant les Panathénées. Tandis que les autres pays consacrent l'image de leurs rois, c'est l'image d'un peuple entier que vous transmettrez à la postérité. Combien est douce la tâche qui nous est tracée! Libres au milieu d'un peuple libre, nous n'avons qu'à produire sans contrainte les œuvres les plus propres à honorer notre patrie." Happy indeed the artists called to such lofty duties! and happy the country worthy of such monuments, and worthy of artists fit for their worthy execution!

In turning practically to the question of how art should be studied, an immediate solution is of course to be derived from a just apprehension of the nature of Fine Art in its several branches.

Two of these differ essentially from the third. Painting and Sculpture are mainly imitative arts, while Architecture may be regarded as one, which,—while deriving all that raises it out of a simply useful into a Fine Art from a profound study of what is beautiful, and therefore delightful, in nature's own, and everlasting principles of construction and combination,—is mainly a conventional art.

The present moment appears to me a fitting one to dwell upon the meaning of these terms, which must naturally frequently recur in the sequel to this discourse. An imitative art is one in which primarily the source of pleasure is conveyed to the spectator in the degree in which the work of art conveys to the spectator's mind the effect produced upon him by any object he may have seen.

In the earliest stages the efforts of the artist will be to imitate directly, or in other terms, to project upon a plane by delineation, or to model a plastic substance, or to carve a hard one, as far as he possibly can, into the absolute image of the object he may desire to represent. But let a number of artists represent the same image, and test the