en pleased to give him. The soul is uplifted by this contemplation to
hopes full of enthusiasm and virtue; for beauty is one and the same
throughout the universe, and under whatever form it presents itself, it
always excites a religious emotion in the heart of man. What poetic
language, there is in those countenances where the most sublime
expression is for ever imprinted,--where the grandest thoughts are clad
with an image so worthy of them!

In some instances, an ancient sculptor only produced one statue during
his life--it was his whole history.--He perfected it every day: if he
loved, if he was beloved, if he received from nature or the fine arts
any new impression, he adorned the features of his hero with his
memories and affections: he could thus express to outward eyes all the
sentiments of his soul. The grief of our modern times, in the midst of
our cold and oppressive social conditions, contains all that is most
noble in man; and in our days, he who has not suffered, can never have
thought or felt. But there was in antiquity, something more noble than
grief--an heroic calm--the sense of conscious strength, which was
cherished by free and liberal institutions. The finest Grecian statues
have hardly ever indicated anything but repose. The Laocoon and Niobe
are the only ones which paint violent grief and pain; but it is the
vengeance of heaven which they represent, and not any passion born in
the human heart; the moral being was of so sound an organization among
the ancients, the air circulated so freely in their deep bosoms, and the
order politic was so much in harmony with their faculties, that troubled
minds hardly ever existed then, as at the present day. This state causes
the discovery of many fine ideas, but does not furnish the arts,
particularly sculpture, with those simple affections, those primitive
elements of sentiment, which can alone be expressed by eternal marble.
Hardly do we find any traces of melancholy; a head of Apollo, at the
Justinian palace, another of the dying Alexander, are the only ones in
which the thoughtful and suffering dispositions of the soul are
indicated; but according to all appearances they both belong to the time
when Greece was enslaved. Since that epoch, we no longer see that
boldness, nor that tranquillity of soul, which among the ancients, has
produced masterpieces of sculpture, and poetry composed in the same
spirit.

That thought which has nothing to nourish it from wit