hout, turns upon
itself, analyses, labours, and dives into every inward sentiment; but it
has no longer that creative power which supposes happiness, and that
plenitude of strength which happiness alone can give. Even the
sarcophagi, among the ancients, only recall warlike or pleasing ideas:
in the multitude of those which are to be found at the museum of the
Vatican, are seen battles and games represented in bas-relief on the
tombs. The remembrance of living activity was thought to be the finest
homage that could be rendered to the dead; nothing relaxed, nothing
diminished strength. Encouragement and emulation were the principles of
the fine arts as well as of politics; they afforded scope for every
virtue, and for every talent. The vulgar gloried in knowing how to
admire, and the worship of genius was served even by those who could not
aspire to its rewards.

The religion of Greece was not, like Christianity, the consolation of
misfortune, the riches of poverty, the future hope of the dying--it
sought glory and triumph;--in a manner it deified man: in this
perishable religion, beauty itself was a religious dogma. If the artists
were called to paint the base and ferocious passions, they rescued the
human form from shame, by joining to it, as in Fauns and Centaurs, some
traits of the animal figure; and in order to give to beauty its most
sublime character, they alternately blended in their statues (as in the
warlike Minerva and in the Apollo Musagetus), the charms of both
sexes--strength and softness, softness and strength; a happy mixture of
two opposite qualities, without which neither of the two would be
perfect.

Corinne, continuing her observations, retained Oswald some time before
those sleeping statues which are placed on the tombs, and which display
the art of sculpture in the most agreeable point of view. She pointed
out to him, that whenever statues are supposed to represent an action,
the arrested movement produces a sort of astonishment which is sometimes
painful. But statues asleep, or merely in the attitude of complete
repose, offer an image of eternal tranquillity which wonderfully accords
with the general effect of a southern climate upon man. The fine arts
appear there to be peaceful spectators of nature, and genius, which in
the north agitates the soul of man, seems beneath a beautiful sky, only
an added harmony.

Oswald and Corinne passed on to the hall where are collected together
the sculptured