To judge of the proportions of these, you must be first acquainted with the purposes for which they were designed.

Good sense and experience acting together, find out what is fit to be done in every work of art.

We are rational creatures, and in all our works we ought to regard their end and purpose; the gratification of any passion, how innocent soever, ought only to be of secondary consideration.

Herein is placed the real power of fitness and proportion; they operate on the understanding considering them, which _approves_ the work and acquiesces in it.

The passions, and the imagination which principally raises them, have here very little to do.
When a room appears in its original nakedness, bare walls and a plain ceiling: let its proportion be ever so excellent, it pleases very little; a cold approbation is the utmost we can reach; a much worse proportioned room with elegant mouldings and fine festoons, glasses, and other merely ornamental furniture, will make the imagination revolt against the reason; it will please much more than the naked proportion of the first room, which the understanding has so much approved, as admirably fitted for its purposes.