polite arts, i. e. painting, sculpture, and architecture, to which may be added engraving. It appears that all civilized nations in every age have produced artists, and that with a degree of excellence, generally answerable to their civilization and opulence. In every nation where the arts have flourished, the artists have made but rude essays, and by degrees they have been nurtured up to excellence, except in such instances where they have been transplanted, as from Greece to Rome. It is universally acknowledged respecting statuary and architecture, that ancient Greece has produced the best artists in the world; their works, which have escaped the ravages of time, are the standing monuments of their fame, and are still considered as the models of perfection; there is, how ever, an uncertainty whether their painters were equally skilled with their statuaries. With some reason, many judicious persons have supposed they were not; while others contend, that so much excellence produced in one branch must have contemporary artists, who would excel in the other also. While we cannot doubt of the genius of the Grecian artists, and of their ability to produce works of excellence, yet it may not be allowed, that this argument will be found to be so conclusive as it may at first appear, since Chinese and Indian models are found in a more perfect state than either their drawings or paintings. When the Goths overran Italy, the arts were destroyed; and, with Grecian architecture, painting and sculpture lay in one common grave forgotten, until they revived under some artists in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, who ought not to be named as artists, but for the succeeding effects to which their efforts prepared the way, and in a short time af ter produced Michael Angelo, Raphael, Correggio, Titian, Algardi, Bernini, &c. painters, sculptors, and architects, to whose works the living artists are almost as much indebted as these illustrious characters were to the ancient monuments they dug from the ruins of old Rome. See ARTS, fine.

ARTOCARPUS, in botany, bread-fruit tree. Class, Monoecia Monandria. Male flowers, cal. none; ament cylindrical, all covered with florets; cor. to each two petals, oblong, concave, blunt, villose.; stam. filament single, within each corolla, filiform, the length of the corolla; anther oblong. Female flowers, on the same tree: cal. and corolla none; pist. germs very many; connected into a globe, hexangular style to each, filiform; stigma single, or two, capillary, revolute; per. fruit ovate, globular,

compound, muricate; seed for each germ solitary, oblong, covered with a pulpy aril, placed on an ovate receptacle. There are but two species, 1. A. incisa, which is the thickness of a man, and upwards of 40 feet high; the trunk is upright; the wood soft, smooth, and yellowish; the inner bark white, composed of a net of stiffish fibres, the outer bark smooth, but full of chinks, pale ash-colour, with small tubercles thinly scattered over it. Wherever the tree is wounded, it pours out a glutinous milky liquor. The branches form an ample almost globular head; the lower ones, which are the longest, spring from the trunk 10 or 12 feet above the ground, spreading almost horizontally, scattered, and in a sort of whorl; twigs ascending, bearing flowers and fruit at their ends. In captain Cook's voyage it is observed, that the bread-fruit tree is about the size of a middling oak; its leaves are frequently a foot and a half long, oblong, deeply sinuated, like those of the fig-tree, which they resemble in consistence and colour, and in exuding a milky juice when broken. The fruit is the size and shape of a child's head, and the surface is reticulated not much unlike a truffle; it is covered with a thin skin, and has a core about as big as the handle of a small knife; the eatable part lies between the skin and core; it is as white as snow, and of the consistence of new bread. It must be roasted before it is eaten, being first divided into three or four parts; its taste is insipid, with a slight sweetness, somewhat resembling that of the crumb of wheaten bread mixed with the Jerusalem artichoke. The fruit not being in season all the year, there is a method of supplying this defect, by reducing it to sour paste called makie; and besides this, cocoa-nuts, bananas, plantains, and a great variety of other fruits, come in aid of it. This tree not only supplies food, but also clothing, for the bark is stripped off the suckers, and formed into a kind of cloth. To procure the fruit for food costs the Otaheiteans no trouble or labour but climbing a tree; which though it should not indeed shoot up spontaneously, yet, as Captain Cook observes, if a man plant ten trees in his life time, he will as completely fulfil his duty to his own and future generations, as the native of our less temperate climate can do by ploughing in the cold winter, and reaping in the summer's heat, as often as these seasons return; even if after he has procured bread for his present household, he should convert a surplus into money, and lay it up for his children. But where the

the botanic garden at Kew, by captain Bligh, in 1793. The bread-fruit, when perfectly ripe, is pulpy, sweetish, putrescent, and in this state is thought to be too laxative; but when green it is farinaceous, and esteemed a very wholesome food, either baked under the coals, or roasted over them. The taste is not unlike that of wheaten bread, but with some resemblance to that of Jerusalem artichokes, or potatoes. It was mentioned before, that a sort of cloth was made of the inner bark: to this we may add, that the wood is used in building boats and houses; the male catkins serve for tinder; the leaves for wrapping their food in, and for wiping their hands instead of towels; and the juice for making bird-lime, and as a cement for filling up the cracks of their vessels for holding water. Three trees are supposed to yield sufficient nourishment for one person. 2. A. integrifolia, Indian jacca tree. The East Indian jacca, or jack tree, is about the same size as the foregoing, or perhaps larger. The foot-stalk is somewhat triangular, smooth, and an inch in length. The fruit weighs 30 pounds and upwards; it has within it frequently from two to three hundred seeds, three or four times as big as almonds; they are ovate-oblong, blunt at one end, sharp at the other, and a little flatted on the sides.

These two species of Artocarpus cannot be distinguished with certainty either by the form of the leaves, or the situation of the fruit; for the leaves in this are sometimes lobed as on that; and the situation of the fruit varies with the age of this tree, being first borne on the brauches, and then on the trunk, and finally on the roots. The jacca tree is a native of Malabar and the other parts of the East Indies. The fruit is ripe in December, and is then eaten, but is esteemed difficult of digestion; the unripe fruit is also used pickled, or cut into slices and boiled, or fried in palm oil. The nuts are eaten roasted, and the skin which immediately covers them, is used instead of the areca nut in chewing betel. The wood of the tree serves for building. No less than 30 varieties of the fruit are enumerated in Malabar. It was introduced into the royal botanic garden at Kew, in 1778, by Sir Edward Hughes, Knight of the Bath.

ARTS, fine. The Fine Arts may be properly defined those which, blending elegant ornament with utility, convey intellectual pleasure to the mind, through the medium of the fancy or imagination. They are termed elegant or fine arts, not in op.

position to those which are necessary or useful, but to distinguish them from such as are necessary or useful only.

The arts, generally distinguished by the appellation fine, are Poetry, Music, Painting, Sculpture, and Engraving, with their several branches. To these we may not improperly add Dancing, and also Architecture; for the latter, although in its origin it was merely appropriated to purposes of utility, has certainly, by its various proportions, modes, and embellishments, become highly ornamental and impressive to the imagination.

It is perhaps scarcely within the scope of a work of this kind, intended for the promulgation of the best-established doctrines on the various branches of human knowledge, rather than as a receptacle for novel and dubious conjecture, to discuss how far the general sense in which a term is understood includes its full and entire meaning; otherwise it might not be impossible to show that many branches of art or science, besides the above mentioned, have an inseparable connection with the fine arts; and that, of consequence, their influence at least, if not their dominion, is much more widely extended than is commonly supposed.

If between poetry and painting there really subsist that close affinity which has been so generally allowed, if they are daughters of the same parent, if their object be the same, the mode by which they accomplish that object alone different, if painting is mute poesy, and the poem a speaking picture; may we not reasonably conclude that there exists some great rule, some primary principle, common to both; and hope, by tracing the conduct of the one art, to throw some additional light on the other? Perhaps the result of an investigation upon the nature and boundaries of the art of poetry would, by analogy, at once bring us to this conclusion, that it is impossible to define the precise limits of the fine arts in general, or what is alone their ob ject.

Although metre or versification be necessary to constitute what is strictly called poesy, still it is by all admitted and felt, that it is the last qualification of a great poet; and hence a noble author, (Lord Landsdown) observes, that "Versification is in poetry what colouring is in painting, a beautiful ornament." "But," he adds, " if the proportions are just, the posture true, the figure bold, and the resemblance ac

cording to nature, though the colours happen to be rough, or carelessly laid on, yet the picture shall lose nothing of its esteem." But if skill in versification be the least, what are then the greater qualities which constitute the poet? The question is easily answered: those very qualities which, in a greater or less degree, are requisite to the formation of an elegant speaker or writer, on almost any subject, whether in prose or verse, with the exception of those of profound or abstruse science. And indeed the different species of prose writers have, from time to time, made such encroachments on what is perhaps more peculiarly the province of poetry; and the poets have, as it were in revenge, adopted so many of those subjects which belong more properly to prose, that the chief difference now remaining between the two parties seems to be, that the latter express their thoughts through the medium of metre or rhyme, and the former without that ornament. Who will deny the title of poet to the authors of Telemachus and the Death of Abel? And who will deny, that some of those treatises which have employed the ingenuity of poets, under the title of didactic poems, would better have attained the object of instruction and conviction to the reader, had they been written in the energetic prose of a Bacon, a Swift, or a Johnson?

That a similitude between poetry and painting, as before mentioned, really subsists, there can be little doubt; nor would it be difficult to point out instances of productions in each of these arts, as well as of music, so resembling in character as to seem, as it were, different emanations from one spirit, and alike calculated to excite kindred sensations in the breast of the hearer or spectator. But, however close the comparison might have been at the period when that comparison was first made, when each art was, in fact, applied to effect similar purposes, though through different means; it is certain that since the objects of their pursuit have become more varied and extended, the propriety of the comparison between them has proportionably diminished.

But if, instead of contenting ourselves with retracing the old parallel of poetry with painting, we were to take a wider range, and consider the arts of design as a mode of conveying ideas, or as analogous to language or writing in general, such an inquiry might lead us to a just appreciation of their importance, by exhibiting a com

prehensive view of the extent of their pow ers, and of the modes of applying those powers as means for the attainment of any desired end.

The arts of design we may then consider as a language, by which, though all things cannot be expressed, many at least may, in a stronger and clearer manner than can be effected by any other. And it is scarcely necessary to add, that, all those arts or sciences to the comprehension or practice of which lineation or modelling is requisite, are more or less dependent on design.

The arts of design, or those dependent on design, may be divided into three great classes: arts, simply useful or necessary; arts, whose object it is to unite elegance with utility; and arts, whose aim is more decidedly to elevate the human mind, by an appropriate choice of the most grand and beautiful objects.

Design, so far as it is requisite for the common purposes of life, as building dwelling-houses, planning convenient furniture, forming canals, raising aqueducts, &c. is a useful, or indeed a necessary art. Without design, by which the explanatory figures are furnished, the first principles of geometry and the mathematics, the foundation of so large a portion of human knowledge, would be unintelligible. Without design we should be ignorant of the situations and bearings of different countries; without the assistance of maps and charts, the pilot would be ignorant what course to steer; nay, the compass itself may be termed the offspring of design. By her means, without the constant recurrence to dissection, the physician and surgeon are instructed in the various situations and appearances of the bones, veins, nerves, muscles, and every other part of the human frame; and, by her assistance, the visible symptoms of disorders can be accurately described, when words would have been inadequate to the task.

If we consider design as applicable to those arts, sciences, or manufactures, whose object it is to combine utility and instruction with ornament and amusement, we shall find her province not less extended. The chair, the sofa, the table, and the lamp, no longer confined to the purposes of mere necessity, present themselves, adorned with all the graces of Grecian art, at once the instruments of our comfort, and the embellishment of our apartments. By means of design, we are transported to foreign climes; we behold their buildings, pro