Many circumstances may favour or counteract this tendency, such as the difficulty of finding an agreeable place to retire to, where the money will be secure, or the interest regularly paid; but, an inquiry into that will come more properly when we examine the external causes of decline.

Though the increase of taxes, by augmenting the expense of living, and of the necessaries of life, is little felt by the labouring class, their wages rising in proportion; yet a most disastrous effect is produced on the fine arts, and on all productions of which the price does not bear a proportional rise.

Where taxes are high, and luxury great, there must be some persons who have a great deal of ostentation, even if they have little taste.  A picture or a jewel of great value will, very certainly, find a purchaser, but that will only serve as a motive for bringing the fine painting from another country, where the necessaries of life are cheaper, and where men enjoy that careless ease which is incompatible with a high state of taxation.

When Rome became luxurious, to the highest pitch, there were neither poets, painters, nor historians, bred within its walls; buffoons and fiddlers could get more money than philosophers, and they had more saleable talents.  Had Virgil not found an Augustus, had he lived three centuries later, he must either have written ballads and lampoons, or have starved; otherwise he must have quitted Italy.

When Rome was full of luxury, and commanded the world and its wealth, there was not an artist in it capable of executing the statues of its victorious generals. {94}

Some Greek island, barren and bare, would breed artists capable of making ornaments for imperial Rome.

—–­ {94} They were obliged to cut the heads off from ancient statues, as their artists were only sufficiently expert to carve the drapery of the body. -=-

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It is an easy matter, in a rich country, to pay for a fine piece of art, But a difficult matter to find a price for the bringing up a fine artist. {95}

The fine arts have not, indeed, any intimate or immediate connection with the wealth or strength of a nation.  The balance of trade has never been greatly increased by the exportation of great masterpieces of art, nor have nations been subdued by the powers of oratory; but the knowledge and the arts, by which wealth and greatness are obtained, follow in the train of the finer performances of human genius.

Where money becomes the universal agent, where it is impossible to enjoy ease or comfort for a single day without it, it becomes an object of adoration, as it were.  To despise gold, which purchases all things, is reckoned a greater crime than to despise him to whose bounty we are indebted for all things; consequently, ambition, without which there never is excellence, is, at an early period of life, bent towards the gaining a fortune.  A man, indeed,