moral order of classification: and since a chronological series would have been as useless as an alphabetical one would appear ridiculous, we have taken the liberty of presenting the Portraits, with the biographical Sketches, promiscuously. In such manner the Originals would be placed, if they were collected in a gallery of paintings; an arrangement, which not being adstricted to special rules, save perhaps in regard to similarity of size or ornament of the frame, offers a most entertaining variety; and whilst it carries the imagination of the beholder from place to place, from age to age, gives him a pleasing opportunity of exercising that wonderful privilege of his mind-the godlike faculty of penetrating, in an instant, the immen sity of time and of space, unretarded and unopposed: vivida vis animi pervicit, et extrà Processit longè flammantia monia mundi: Atque omne immensum peragravit mente, animoque. |