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think a taxation of this king can lay claim to representation in the government of the academy!

I have not time to pursue other errors, all which may be traced to misconception of the nature of an Academy of Arts. I will notice only a plausible objection to academies raised by the reviewer; he seems to fear that artists associated in academy will so control the general taste, as to force a false system of art upon the public. 

"It tends," he says, "to the information of a school, which is little else that a system of errors and deviations form that imitation of general nature, &c." 

The plan of our academy, formed, as it is, on the English model, renders any such fears groundless. Whatever danger from this cause might be apprehended from any ill-managed academies on the continent of Europe, the objection does not lie against the royal academy of London. The English school is not the school of Reynolds, or West, or Lawrence, or any other painter; it is a school pre-eminently diversified in talent and styles; and it may, perhaps, be attributed to that more perfect exemption from foreign interference, which in some respects distinguishes it from the continental academies, that English art is so replete with various beauty. Is it not most reasonable to suppose, that the styles of the different artists, which are annually assembled in one exhibition, and submitted to popular judgment,should rather produce a diversity of styles, according to the diversity of popular tastes, than foster the errors of any single master. But the error of manner does not lie with Academies. Popular and distinguished artists, Have always had, and ever will have, their imitators, whether connected with Academies or not. But I must not here enlarge; it is sufficient for my purpose now to show that if Academies were the source of the error, the remedy of the reviewer is useless. He thinks the "admission of connoisseurs into the government" of the Academy would cure the evil: But his criticism strikes equally at the root of all Academies, whether constructed on his ideal, or on the common model. How are the connoisseurs to act upon the evil?