FIRST LECTURE.

7

Guided by thefe preliminaries we now approach thathappy coad, where, from an arbitrary hieroglyph, thepalliative of ignorance, from a tool of defpotifm,or a ponderous monument of eternal deep, art emergedinto life, motion and liberty; where fituation, climate,national character, religion, manners and governmentconfpired to raife it on that permanent balls, which afterthe ruins of the fabric itfelf, dill fublids and bids de-fiance to the ravages of time ; as uniform in the prin-ciple as various in its applications, the art of the Greekspoflefied in itfelf and propagated, like its chief objectMan, the germs of immortality.

I fhall not detail here the reafons and the coincidenceof fortunate circumdances which raifed the Greeks to bethe arbiters of form {a). The dandard they erected, thecanon they framed, fell not from Heaven : but asthey fancied themfelves of divine origin, and Religion was the fird mover of their art, it followed that theyfhould endeavour to inved their authors with the modperfect form; and as Man podedes that exclufively, theywere led to a complete and intellectual dudy of his ele-ments

(a) This has been done in a fuperior manner by J. G. Herder, in bis Ideen zurPhiloJ'ophie da- gefchichte der Menfchheit, vol. iii. Book 13, a work lately tranflatedunder the title of Outlines of a Philofophy of the Hijiory of Man, 4to.