indeed, though they have
gone deeper than any, only because they are in their own essence
unfathomable. Time, as it flows on, bears us to new regions to be
explored, whose riches constantly add new stores to our wisdom, and open
new views to science. But in all art they have reached a point beyond
which none have since advanced, and beyond which it hardly seems
possible to go. A doric column, a doric temple, a corinthian capital, a
corinthian temple--these perfectly satisfy and fill the mind; and, for
seven hundred years, no change or addition has been made or attempted
that has not been felt to be an injury. And I doubt not that seven
thousand years hence, if time could but spare it so long, pilgrims would
still go in search of the beautiful from the remotest parts of the
world, from parts now unknown, to worship before the Parthenon, and, may
I not add, the Temple of the Sun in Palmyra!

Periander has gained new honors by this admirable piece of work. I had
hardly commenced my examination of it, when a grating voice at my elbow,
never, once heard, to be mistaken for any other, croaked out what was
meant as a challenge.

'The greatest captain of this or of any age!'

It was Spurius, a man whom no slight can chill nor, even insult, cause
to abate the least of his intrusive familiarity--a familiarity which he
covets, too, only for the sake of disputation and satire. To me,
however, he is never other than a source of amusement. He is a variety
of the species I love occasionally to study.

I told him I was observing the workmanship, without thinking of the man
represented.

'If you will allow me to say it,' he rejoined, 'a very inferior subject
of contemplation. A statue--as I take it, the thing, that is, for which
it is made, is commemoration. If one wants to see fine work in marble,
there is the cornice for him just overhead: or in brass, let him look at
the doors of the new temple, or the last table or couch of Syphax. The
proper subject for man is man.'

'Well, Spurius, on your own ground then. In this brass I do not see
brass, nor yet Aurelian--'

'What then, in the name of Hecate?'

'Nothing but intellect--the mind, the soul of the greater artist,
Periander. That drapery never fell so upon Aurelian; nor was Aurelian's
form or bearing ever like this. It is all ennobled, and exalted above
pure nature, by the divine power of genius. The true artist, under every
form and every line of nature, sees another form