Architecture, painting, and sculpture, may be described as the sensual classes of the fine arts, and poetry and music as the intellectual. The former address themselves at once to our senses. Their aim is to exhibit the resemblances of things which we have seen; but the latter address themselves to the mind, and call up trains of thought by means that have no likeness to those ideas which they themselves renew. Of all the fine arts, architecture is not only that which is most easily traced to its origin in the wants of mankind, but that on which all the others are dependent. All the others, when compared with architecture, are only representative, and contribute only to the gratification of those wants which arise from the experience of pleasure. But this primeval art is, in its rudimental state, almost as necessary to man as food, and in its refined, no less essential to the improvement of every other. Painting and sculpture are the arts which seem to have the greatest affinity to architecture, and to be immediately connected with its use and progress. For the origin of painting we have no evidence of any such obvious instinct as that which led man to the art of building; and it may be doubted whether it ought to be considered as an invention anterior or coeval with sculpture. The influence of painting and sculpture on the mind is like that of oratory, which persuades by the statement of truths; the power of poetry and music is felt like that of magic, which calls up spirits, and produces miraculous effects by the mixing of certain ingredients curiously culled. As the orator cannot state a truth justly and perspicuously, without obtaining an immediate concurrence in opinion from his auditors, so the painter or sculptor cannot exhibit a picture or a statue properly executed without obtaining the admiration of all spectators. But the jurisdiction of poetry and music is not so universal, for they are dependent on associations in the minds of those to whom they address themselves. Truth is every where the same, but habits are local. And the arts of painting and sculpture are connected with truths, while those of music and painting are dependent on habits, 1. What are the chief objects of science and art? 2. Upon which of the fine arts are all the others dependent? and why so? 3. Why is the influence of painting and sculpture on the mind likę that of oratory? GENERAL WASHINGTON. 169 LESSON CXX.-APRIL THE THIRTIETH. General Washington. On this day, in 1789, the renowned Washington was inaugurated President of the United States, in the city of New York, amid the acclamations of thousands of spectators. It has been justly said by one of his biographers that "the whole range of history does not present a character on which we can dwell with such entire unmixed admiration:" his moral and intellectual qualities were so happily blended that he might seem expressly formed for the part assigned to him on the theatre of the world. His firm mind, equally inaccessible to the flatteries of hope and the suggestions of despondence, was kept steady by the grand principles of pure love to his country and a religious attachment to moral duty. In him even fame, glory, and reputation were subordinate to the performance of the task imposed upon him; and no one ever passed through the ordeal of power more free from the most remote suspicion of selfish or ambitious designs. Capable of strong and decisive measures when necessary, they were tempered with the lenity which flows from true benevolence. In person he was tall and well-proportioned. His form was dignified, and his port majestic. His passions were naturally strong; but he had obtained a full command over them. In the character of intellect judgment predominated. To fancy and vivacity he had no pretension; but good sense displayed itself in all that he said or wrote. It was a proof of strong powers of acquisition, that, scanty as his literary education had been, by a careful study of the English language in its best models, he became master of a style at once pure, elegant, and energetic; and few better specimens of public addresses can be shown than in the products of his pen. Many more brilliant characters appear in the pages of history and biography; scarcely any so thoroughly estimable. 1. What took place on this day, in 1789? 2. In what part of the world are the United States? and what is the name of the capital? 3. To what were fame, glory, and reputation subordinate in Washing ton? 4. What was his personal appearance ? 5. To what had he no pretension? I MAY-DAY. 171 LESSON CXXI.-MAY THE FIRST. May-Day. of IN ancient times May-day was celebrated by the young both sexes in the following manner:- They rose shortly after midnight, and went to some neighbouring wood, attended by songs and music, and, breaking green branches from the trees, adorned them with wreaths and crowns of flowers. They returned home at the rising of the sun, and made their windows and doors gay with garlands. In the villages they danced during the day round the Maypole, which afterwards remained the whole year untouched a fading emblem and a consecrated offering to the Goddess of Flowers. Hail! sacred thou to social joy! To mirth and wine, sweet First of May; Hail! thou, of ever-circling time That gracest still the ceaseless flow! So fresh, so fragrant is the gale, Which o'er the islands of the blest Where thy hush'd groves, Elysium, sleep, So, where dull Lethe's waters creep, They heave, scarce heave the cypress bough. And such, when heaven with penal flame Hail! thou the fleet year's pride and prime! Hail! image of primeval time! Hail! sample of a world to come! LESSON CXXII. -MAY THE SECOND. Hamlet's Instruction to the Players. Ham. SPEAK the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus; but use all gently: for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious, periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings; who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for out-doing Termagant; it out-herods Herod. Pray you avoid it. Play. I warrant your honour. Ham. Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor : suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first, and now, was, and is, to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure. Now this, overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of which one must, in your allowance, overweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly,—not to speak it profanely, that neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, Pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed, that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably. us. Play. I hope we have reformed that indifferently with Ham. O, reform it altogether. And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them: for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though, in the mean time, some necessary question of the play be |