weetness, which we know not only by the
accounts of eyewitnesses, but by the numerous imitations and copies in
marble which have come down to us. One cannot fail to see, even in these
copies, a wonderful expression of power, wisdom, and goodness. The head,
with leonine locks of hair and thickly rolling beard, expresses power, the
broad brow and fixed gaze of the eyes, wisdom; while the sweet smile of
the lips indicates goodness. The throne was of cedar, ornamented with
gold, ivory, ebony, and precious stones. The sceptre was composed of
every kind of metal. The statue was forty feet high, on a pedestal of
twelve feet. To die without having seen this statue was regarded by the
Greeks as almost as great a calamity as not to have been initiated into
the mysteries.[240]

In like manner the poetic conception of Apollo was inferior to that of the
sculptor. In the mind of the latter Phoebus is not merely an archer, not
merely a prophet and a singer, but the entire manifestation of genius. He
is inspiration; he radiates poetry, music, eloquence from his sublime
figure. The Phidian Jupiter is lost to us, except in copies, but in the
Belvedere Apollo we see how the sculptor could interpret the highest
thought of the Hellenic mind. He who visits this statue by night in the
Vatican Palace at Rome, seeing it by torchlight, has, perhaps, the most
wonderful impression left on his imagination which art can give. After
passing through the long galleries of the Vatican, where, as the torches
advance, armies of statues emerge from the darkness before you, gaze on
you with marble countenance, and sink back into the darkness behind, you
reach at last the small circular hall which contains the Apollo. The
effect of torchlight is to make the statue seem more alive. One limb, one
feature, one expression after another, is brought out as the torches move;
and the wonderful form becomes at last instinct with life. Milman has
described the statue in a few glowing but unexaggerated lines:--

"For mild he seemed, as in Elysian towers,
Wasting, in careless ease, the joyous hours;
Haughty, as bards have sung, with princely sway
Curbing the fierce flame-breathing steeds of day;
Beauteous, as vision seen in dreamy sleep
By holy maid, on Delphi's haunted steep."

* * * * *

All, all divine; no struggling muscle glows,
Through heaving vein no mantling life-blood flows,
But, animat