History of Sculpture, Painting, and Architecture

THE FINE ARTS.
BY J. S. MEMES, LL. D.
BOSTON: CLAPP AND BROADERS, SCHOOL STREET 1834.
TO THE VERY REVEREND WILLIAM JACK, D.D. PRINCIPAL OF THE UNIVERSITY AND KING'S COLLEGE, ABERDEEN; IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE OF EARLY KINDNESS AND CONTINUED FRIENDSHIP. AND AS A SINCERE THOUGH INADEQUATE TRIBUTE OF MOST PROFOUND RESPECT FOR HIS VIRTUES, LEARNING, TALENTS, AND INTEGRITY, THIS VOLUME, WITH SENTIMENTS OF THE HIGHEST ESTEEM, IS INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR.
It is only bespeaking that share of confidence due, in the first instance, to opportunities of research, to state, that in the following pages not a single work of art is made the subject of criticism, the original of which the author has not seen and examined. Indeed, the substance of his remarks is generally transcribed from notes taken with the statue, or picture, or building, before him. The best authorities, also, have been consulted, and such as from their price or rarity are within reach of few readers. The historical details of Classic Art are chiefly the result of inquiries connected with a work on Grecian Literature, the composition of which has long engaged his hours of leisure. J. S. M.

Taste is the perception of intellectual pleasure. Beauty, the object of taste and the source of this pleasure, is appreciated by the understanding, exercised, either upon the productions of art, or upon the works of nature. The term beauty, indeed, has appeared to admit a specific difference of import, according to the diversity of objects in which it may seem to reside, and the supposed variety of means through which it is perceived by the mind. This cause, more than any other, has tended to throw difficulty and inconclusive inference over every department of the subject. Yet, perhaps in all cases, most certainly in every instance of practical importance to our present purpose—elucidation of the Fine Arts, beauty will be found resolvable into some relation discerned and approved by the understanding. Hence the objects in which this relation exists impart pleasure to the mind, on the well known principles of its constitution.