ARTS, FINE. The fine arts are generally understood to comprehend those productions of human genius and skill which are more or less addressed to the sentiment of taste. They were first employed in embellishing objects of mere utility, but their highest office is to meet our impressions of beauty or sublimity, how ever acquired, by imitative or adequate repre sentation.
The great use of the arts is to humanize and refine, to purify enjoyment, and, when duly appreciated, to connect the perception of physical beauty with that of moral excellence; hut it will at once be seen that this idea of usefulness is in a great measure distinct from the ordinary meaning of the term as applicable to the productions of human ingenuity. A positive use results indeed indirectly from the cultivation of the formative arts, precisely in proportion as their highest powers are deve loped. Again, as illustrating science, the fine arts may be directly useful in the stricter sense, but this is not the application which best displays their nature and value. The essence of the fine arts, in short, begins where utility in its narrower acceptation ends. That
this principle exists in nature we immediately feel in calling to mind the merely beautiful appearances of the visible world, and particu larly the colours of flowers. The fine arts in general may be considered the human repro duction of this principle. The question of their utility therefore resolves itself into the inquiry as to the intention of the beauties of nature.
With regard to the classification of the arts, those arc generally considered the most worthy iu which the mental labour employed and the mental pleasure produced are greatest, and in which the manual labour, or labour of whatever kind, is least apparent. This test would justly place poetry first. It would be an invidious as well as a very difficult task to assign the precise order in which painting, sculpture, architecture and music, would fol low poetry and its sister, eloquence ; but it may be remarked, that the union of the arts is a hazardous experiment, and is often de structive of their effect.