of laughing flowers and jewelled dew-drops; but the dark
Enchantress, enthroned on rocks, or craggy mountains, and whose proper
empire is the shadowy confines of light and darkness.

How all this is done, we shall not attempt to explain. Perhaps the
Artist himself could not answer; as to the _quo modo_ in every
particular, we doubt if it were possible to satisfy another. He may
tell us, indeed, that having imagined certain appearances and effects
peculiar to the Time, he endeavoured to imbue, as it were, some
_human form_ with the sentiment they awakened, so that the
embodied sentiment should associate itself in the spectator's mind
with similar images; and further endeavoured, that the _form_
selected should, by its air, attitude, and gigantic proportions, also
excite the ideas of vastness, solemnity, and repose; adding to this
that indefinite expression, which, while it is felt to act, still
leaves no trace of its indistinct action. So far, it is true, he may
retrace the process; but of the _informing life_ that quickened
his fiction, thus presenting the presiding Spirit of that ominous
Time, he knows nothing but that he felt it, and imparted it to the
insensible marble.

And now the question will naturally occur, Is all that has been done
by the learned in Art, to establish certain canons of Proportion,
utterly useless? By no means. If rightly applied, and properly
considered,--as it seems to us they must have been by the great
artists of Antiquity,--as _expedient fictions_, they undoubtedly
deserve at least a careful examination. And, inasmuch as they are the
result of a comparison of the finest actual forms through successive
ages, and as they indicate the general limits which Nature has been
observed to assign to her noblest works, they are so far to be valued.
But it must not be forgotten, that, while a race, or class, may be
generally marked by a certain average height and breadth, or curve and
angle, still is every class and race composed of _Individuals_,
who must needs, as such, differ from each other; and though the
difference be slight, yet is it "the little more, or the little less,"
which often separates the great from the mean, the wise from the
foolish, in human character;--nay, the widest chasms are sometimes
made by a few lines: so that, in every individual case, the limits in
question are rather to be departed from, than strictly adhered to.

The canon of the Schools is easily mastered by every st