_Sophon._ And man can be made to understand these truths--can be
drawn to crave for and love the fine arts: it is only to take him in
hand as we would take some animal--tenderly using it--entreating it,
as it were, to do its best--to put forth all its powers with all its
capable force and beauty. Nor is it so very difficult a task to
raise, in the low, conceptions of things high: the mass of men have a
fine appreciation of God and his goodness: and as active, charitable,
and sympathetic a nurture in the beautiful and true as they have
given to them in religion, would as surely and swiftly raise in them
an equally high appreciation of the fine arts. But, if the artist
would essay such a labour, he must show them what fine art is: and,
in order to do this effectually, as an architect clears away from
some sacred edifice which he restores the shambles and shops, which,
like filthy toads cowering on a precious monument, have squatted
themselves round its noble proportions; so must he remove from his
art-edifice the deformities which hide--the corruptions which shame
it.
_Christian._ How truly Sophon speaks a retrospective look will show.
The disfigurements which both he and I deplore are strictly what he
compared them to; they are shambles and shops grafted on a sacred
edifice.
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