Page:An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe.djvu/63

In Italy, then, we shall no where find a stronger passion for art or science, yet no country making more feeble efforts to promote either. The Virtuosi and Filosofi seem to have divided the Encyclopedia between each other. Both inviolably attach'd to their respective pursuits, and from an opposition of character, each holding the other in the most sovereign contempt. The Virtuosi professed critics of beauty in the works of art, judge of medals by the smell, and the merit of a picture by feeling. In statuary hang over a fragment with the most ardent gaze of admiration, tho' wanting the head and the other extremities, if dug from a ruin the Torse becomes inestimable. An unintelligible monument of Etruscan barbarity cannot be sufficiently prized; and any thing from Herculanean becomes rapturous. When the intellectual taste is thus decayed,its