fy pain. It is the essential nature of Grace
that it does not know itself; but not being wilfully acquired, it also
cannot be wilfully lost. When intolerable anguish, when even madness,
sent by avenging gods, takes away consciousness and reason, Grace
stands as a protecting demon by the suffering person, and prevents it
from manifesting anything unseemly, anything discordant to Humanity,
but sees to it that, if the person falls, it falls at least a pure and
unspotted victim.

Although not yet the Soul itself, but its forebodings only, Grace
accomplishes by natural means what the Soul does by a divine power, in
transforming pain, torpor, even death itself, into Beauty.

Yet Grace, which thus maintained itself in the extremest adversity,
would be dead, without its transfiguration by the Soul. But what
expression can belong to the Soul in this situation? It delivers
itself from pain, and comes forth conquering, not conquered, by
relinquishing its connection with sensuous existence.

It is for the natural Spirit to exert its energies for the
preservation of sensuous existence; the Soul enters not into
this contest, but its presence moderates even the storms of
painfully-struggling life. Outward force can take away only outward
goods, but not reach the Soul; it can tear asunder a temporal bond,
not dissolve the eternal one of a truly divine love. Not hard and
unfeeling, nor giving up love itself, on the contrary the Soul
displays in pain this love alone, as the sentiment that outlasts
sensuous existence, and thus raises itself above the ruins of outward
life or fortune in divine glory.

It is this expression of the Soul that the creator of the Niobe has
presented to us. All the means by which Art tempers even the Terrible,
are here made use of. Mightiness of form, sensuous Grace, nay, even
the nature of the subject-matter itself, soften the expression,
through this, that Pain, transcending all expression, annihilates
itself, and Beauty, which it seemed impossible to preserve from
destruction when alive, is protected from injury by the commencing
torpor.

But what would it all be without the Soul, and how does this manifest
itself?

We see on the countenance of the mother, not grief alone for the
already prostrated flower of her children; not alone deadly anxiety
for the preservation of those yet remaining, and of the youngest
daughter, who has fled for safety to her bosom; nor resentment against
the cruel deities; l