Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from An Address, Delivered Before the Trustees and Students
For their supposed practical inutility, almost every branch of polite learning also has been rejected from'the list of useful study. In relation to Language, History, Rhetoric and a few others, the question is settled and few now think of objecting to them on this account. But Poetry and Music are of a more doubtful character. In relation to these, however, permit me to say, that they are the first lessons which man has ever learn ed from his Maker. Nature's children have always been poets, from the Hebrew of old, to the native inhabitant of your soil, from the hyperborean snows of the Gotlis and Scythians, to the torrid zone, where wanders the African in his native glory. The praises of God have in all. Ages and in, all climates gone up, associated with all that is inspiring in poetry and song; and many of the choicest port1ons of inspiration have been given in poetic numbers.
Painting and sculpture are but sister arts; and those only Who have had the pleasure of looking on the masterpieces of' the first artists, are prepared to judge with any degree of correctness on the subject. -if asked, in general terms, why I would have a taste for the fine arts cultivated, my answer should be, - b'ecause we are so constituted by our Creator that these become to us sources of happiness.' And it yet remains to be proved, that the pleasure derived from this source is less pure.
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