the art of judging with propriety concerning any object or combination of objects. But, in a more limited sense, the science of criticism is confined to the fine arts. The principles of the fine arts are best unfolded by studying the sensitive part of our nature, and by learning what objects are naturally agreeable and what are naturally disagreeable. But the man who aspires to be a critic in these arts must penetrate still deeper; he must clearly perceive what objects are lofty, what low, what are proper or improper, what are manly, and what are mean or trivial. Hence the foundation for judging of taste, and for reasoning upon it, is laid in the nature of things and in the constitution of the human mind; and thus the fine arts, like morals, become a rational science, and, like morals, may be cultivated to a high degree of refinement.