These amateurs, however, are
but few in number. The Quakers have in general only a plain and useful
education. They are not brought up to admire such things, and they have
therefore in general but little taste for the fine and masterly
productions of the painters' art.
Neither would a person, in going through the houses of the Quakers, find
any portraits either of themselves, or of any of their families, or
ancestors, except, to the latter case, they had been taken before they
became Quakers. The first Quakers never had their portraits taken with
their own knowledge and consent. Considering themselves as poor and
helpless creatures, and little better than dust and ashes, they had but
a mean idea of their own images. They were of opinion also, that pride
and self-conceit would be likely to arise to men from the view, and
ostentatious parade, of their own persons. They considered also, that it
became them, as the founders of the society, to bear their testimony
against the vain and superfluous fashions of the world. They believed
also, if there were those whom they loved, that the best method of
shewing their regard to these would be not by having their fleshly
images before their eyes, but by preserving their best actions in their
thoughts, as worthy of imitation; and that their own memory, in the same
manner, should be perpetuated rather in the loving hearts, and kept
alive in the edifying conversation of their descendants, than in the
perishing tablets of canvas, fixed upon the walls of their habitations.
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