FIRST LECTURE.

5

fhould not clafh with the dictionary of my audience:: mineis nearly that of your late prefident. I fhall confinemyfelf at prefent to a few of the moft important; thewords nature, beauty, grace, tafte, copy, imitation,genius, talent.. Thus, by nature I underhand thegeneral and permanent principles of vifible objects, notdisfigured by accident, or diftempered by difeafe, notmodified by fafhion or local habits. Nature is a col-lective idea* and though its eflence exift in each indi-vidual of the fpecies, can never in its perfection inhabita fingle objeCt. On beauty I do not mean to perplexyou or myfelf with abftraCt ideas, and the romanticreveries of platonic philofophy, or to inquire whetherit be the refult of a fimple or complex principle. As alocal idea, beauty is a defpotie prineefs, and fubjeCt tothe anarchies of defpotifm, enthroned to-day, dethronedto-morrow. The beauty we acknowledge is that har-monious whole of the human frame, that unifon ofparts to one end, which enchants us; the refult of theftandard fet by the great mailers of our art, the ancients,and confirmed by the fubmilfive verdict of modemimitation. By grace I mean that artlefs balance ofmotion and repofe fprung from character, founded onpropriety,, which neither falls fhort of the demands noroverleaps the modelty of nature. Applied to execu-tions it means that dextrous power which hides the

means