As we are not ambitious to obtain praife for the extent, but for the excellence of our felection, let us leave fuch as are inferior in fragrance and colour to those who make a collection more for the fake of oftentation, than any regard to ufe, or real ornament.

1

LET

I AM Confident, my dear Emily, you will agree with me in thinking that those perfons make a great miftake who confound the dif tinction which prevails between fashion and tafte. Is not Fashion the offspring of capricious fancy, changing its colours like the chameleon, and almoft as mutable as the wind and the weather? And is not Tafte a principle fixed and permanent, which enables us to relish the beauties we obferve in the works of nature and art? Tafte should correct and restrain fashion, or it will degenerate into abfurdity. This was the cafe

with regard to drefs when the long-waifted ladies were mounted on high heeled fhoes, and encumbered themfelves with enormous hoops; and when the heads of all gentlemen, whether young or old were enveloped in bufhy wigs. You cannot fuppofe that Tafte contributed to fuch grotefque appearances, and made fuch prepofterous efforts to difguife, rather than to adorn the human figure: no, that pure principle can never give its fanction to any deviation from nature, fimplicity, and true elegance. What is the reafon we admire the dreffes of the antient Greeks and Romans? It is because their flowing garments clothed the body without impeding its motions, and admitted the full difplay of grace and cafe. How well adapted to activity is the light garment thrown over the fhoulders of the Apollo Belvidere; how Blowing and graceful is the drapery of the female figures reprefented in the frefco paintings difcovered at Herculaneum and Pompeii; and of thofe which the ingenious Flaxman has copied from the pureft defigns of

the Greek artists with congenial taste to illuftrate the works of Homer and Efchylus!

Tafte, however, is not confined to drefs, equipage, or furniture: it takes a much more extenfive range, and prefides in more extenfive provinces, by reigning fupreme over Poetry, Painting, and Mufic.

True tafte coincides with the love of the beauties of nature, and this love is univerfal. For example, who is not pleased with flowers? How delighted are children with rambling into gardens and fields to gather them! Time confirms this fondnefs, and every perfon makes fome attempt to raise them, from the poor mechanic, the tenant of a garret, who difplays them from his casement, to the duchefs, who can exhibit an elegant and extensive confervatory, fraught with the plants of every clime.

Young children gather poppies as often as any other field flowers, but time and experience correct, or rather form, their tafte, and they learn to give the preference to those that are pleasing for fragrance, as well as

lively colours: they throw away the dandelion to pluck the rofe. Thus they are guided by the principle of felection, and this principle ought to be applied to all the elegant arts. Poetry and Painting, abftra&tedly confidered, are delightful effects of human invention, but neither all poems nor all pictures are equally calculated to give pleasure. You are not to conclude because a certain number of verfes are printed in a beautiful type, upon wire-wove and hot-preffed paper, and are adorned with elegant vignettes, and called Poetry, they deferve the name, on that account only: by no means; for true poetry is the offspring of a fervid imagination, clothed in fuitable language: it muft confift of "thoughts that breathe, and words that burn," to make a pleafing, powerful, and permanent impreffion upon the mind, and be worthy of its high name, and noble character. Du P

In the earliest poet of Greece you will find the moft numerous examples to answer this defcription and perhaps in the whole

range