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the fact of their being members of a common family, as well as possessing an individual organization.
The necessity for such a complex and concurrent study, of the whole, and of each of the parts, has been well expressed by Quatremère de Quincy in the following passage:—"Each of the Fine Arts," he says, "presents itself to our view within its own particular and distinct province, as one of those confederate states which, with others, forms one whole and the same empire; but which, though submitting to the general laws of a central government, has no less its customs, its privileges, its laws of exception, and its especial character impressed upon it by Nature. Consider then how many studies, and how great an extent of knowledge must needs be united to constitute a proper qualification to treat thoroughly the particular theory of all the Fine Arts, since so much labour is requisite to work out that of one only. The entire theory of one art alone is not so very simple a matter."
Of this necessity for caution in theorizing upon architecture, and indeed upon art generally, Pope, with a poet's inspiration, seems to have been conscious, when, in the following few lines, he traces the fate of those who would rush upon generalization, with more zeal than discretion:—
In fearless youth we tempt the height of arts,
While from the bounded level of our mind
Short views we take, nor see the length behind;
But, more advanced, behold with strange surprise,
Far distant scenes of endless science rise."
In no one of the arts more than in Architecture are those visions of "endless science" rather near than distant. The basis of the art we shall find to rest at least as much upon considerations of prudence as upon considerations of beauty; and it is perhaps, on this very account, one of the most improving to study, as exhibiting, in the highest degree, the perfect compatibility of the union of the highest reason