the ancient statues are found to represent
her,--and the student's own feeling must be the judge of that,--they
are undoubtedly both true and important objects of study, as
presenting not only a wider, but a higher view of Nature, than might
else be commanded, were they buried with their authors; since, with
the finest forms of the fairest portion of the earth, we have also in
them the realized Ideas of some of the greatest minds. In like manner
may we extend our sphere of knowledge by the study of all those
productions of later ages which have stood this test. There is no
school from which something may not be learned. But chiefly to the
Italian should the student be directed, who would enlarge his views
on the present subject, and especially to the works of Raffaelle and
Michael Angelo; in whose highest efforts we have, so to speak,
certain revelations of Nature which could only have been made by her
privileged seers. And we refer to them more particularly, as to the
two great sovereigns of the two distinct empires of Truth,--the
Actual and the Imaginative; in which their claims are acknowledged
by _that_ within us, of which we know nothing but that it
_must_ respond to all things true. We refer to them, also, as
important examples in their mode of study; in which it is evident
that, whatever the source of instruction, it was never considered as a
law of servitude, but rather as the means of giving visible shape to
their own conceptions.

From the celebrated antique fragment, called the Torso, Michael Angelo
is said to have constructed his forms. If this be true,--and we have
no reason to doubt it,--it could nevertheless have been to him little
more than a hint. But that is enough to a man of genius, who stands
in need, no less than others, of a point to start from. There was
something in this fragment which he seems to have felt, as if of a
kindred nature to the unembodied creatures in his own mind; and he
pondered over it until he mastered the spell of its author. He then
turned to his own, to the germs of life that still awaited birth,
to knit their joints, to attach the tendons, to mould the
muscles,--finally, to sway the limbs by a mighty will. Then emerged
into being that gigantic race of the Sistina,--giants in mind no less
than in body, that appear to have descended as from another planet.
His Prophets and Sibyls seem to carry in their persons the commanding
evidence of their mission. They neither look nor mo