Art Its Laws And the Reasons for Them

PREFACE. THE design of the author of this volume is to render some assistance to those who desire to acquire a knowledge uf the principles of taste as exhibited in the peat productions of ancient and modern Art. An acquaintance with those principles is now getting to be regarded as a necessary part of polite education but a great hindrance to obtaining such knowledge has been the want of a test-book in which those principles are concisely ancl intelligibly discussed, and illustrated by reference to particular esamples in the painting, sculpture, and architecture of the past and the present. Attempts have been made to remedy this evil, but nerer with much success first, because the authors of them liacl no practical knowledge of art and second, because, like most critics of these subjects, they gave a transcript merely of the emotions which morks of art arakelled in themselves, and not the reasons why they were worthy of the admiration of the beholder, or, at best, stating the rules of