aus. 1, 2, sec. 4) the
ideal of Demeter, mother-like, as Here--whom we still call Juno now--
but softer-featured, and her eyes more closed.

And so for mother earth, as for the rest, the best representation of
the divine was the human. Now, conceive such an idea taking hold,
however slowly, of a people of rare physical beauty, of acutest eye
for proportion and grace, with opportunities of studying the human
figure such as exist nowhere now, save among tropic savages, and
gifted, moreover, in that as in all other matters, with that inmate
diligence, of which Mr. Carlyle has said, "that genius is only an
infinite capacity of taking pains," and we can understand somewhat of
the causes which produced those statues, human and divine, which awe
and shame the artificiality and degeneracy of our modern so-called
civilisation--we can understand somewhat of the reverence for the
human form, of the careful study of every line, the storing up for
use each scattered fragment of beauty of which the artist caught
sight, even in his daily walks, and consecrating it in his memory to
the service of him or her whom he was trying to embody in marble or
in bronze. And when the fashion came in of making statues of victors
in the games, and other distinguished persons, a new element was
introduced, which had large social as well as artistic results. The
sculptor carried his usual reverence into his careful delineation of
the victor's form, while he obtained in him a model, usually of the
very highest type, for perfecting his idea of some divinity. The
possibility of gaining the right to a statue gave a fresh impulse to
all competitors in the public games, and through them to the
gymnastic training throughout all the states of Greece, which made
the Greeks the most physically able and graceful, as well as the most
beautiful people known to the history of the human race,--a people
who, reverencing beauty, reverenced likewise grace or acted beauty,
so utterly and honestly, that nothing was too humble for a free man
to do, if it were not done awkwardly and ill. As an instance,
Sophocles himself--over and above his poetic genius, one of the most
cultivated gentlemen, as well as one of the most exquisite musicians,
dancers, and gymnasts, and one of the most just, pious, and gentle of
all Greece--could not, by reason of the weakness of his voice, act in
his own plays, as poets were wont to do, and had to perform only the
office of stage-manage