roduced hero worship, and the great man who won the praise and
admiration of the people by his exalted qualities, or his prowess in
arms, was considered as a demigod, or one in favor with the tenants of
Olympus, and his statue was accordingly erected, to stand beside that,
perhaps, of Mars, Apollo, or Mercury.

Thus we trace the history of sculpture in its steady progress from its
use as a chronicler of events to its employment in the production of the
objects of idolatry, and thence to the mythological period, when it
became the medium of aesthetic expression, attaining its highest
perfection in the palmy days of Greece.

In no people of which the records of the past give any account, can we
find such an active sense of the beautiful as that which permeated the
minds of the polished Greeks. The admiration of physical beauty became
an almost absorbing passion, and its attainment was sought after in
every process which human ingenuity could devise.

The Lacedemonian women were accustomed to place the statues of beautiful
gods or goddesses in their rooms, to the end that the children they
should give birth to, would, by nature's mysterious methods, assimilate
the artistic graces of these celestial models. Perfection of form and
manly strength were the pride of the wisest and most learned men of the
nation, denoting that physical excellence was considered the necessary
concomitant of moral or intellectual worth. Authentic annals tell us
that Plato and Pythagoras appeared as wrestlers at the public games; and
who shall say that these philosophical gymnasts did not derive much of
their mental vigor from this exciting exercise? In this age it is easy
to see that sculpture must have received every incentive to full
development. In the people about him the artist saw the most excellent
models for his chisel, while the national taste was educated to the
highest degree in the beauties of form and the harmonies of proportion.

But the grand conceptions of Phidias, full of majesty and of grandeur as
they are--the matchless finish of the works of Apelles and Praxiteles,
ravishing the senses with their carnal beauty, still lacked one element,
without which art can never reveal itself in the full perfection of its
latent capabilities.

Mere physical beauty, which contains no spiritual element, no drawing of
the immortal soul, no suggestion of purer and nobler sentiments
struggling for expression in the cunning marble, can never sa