e eye is irrespective of
imitation on one side, and of structure on the other.

[Illustration: I.

PORCH OF SAN ZENONE. VERONA.]

[Illustration: II.

THE ARETHUSA OF SYRACUSE.]

[Illustration: III.

THE WARNING TO THE KINGS

SAN ZENONE. VERONA.]

21. (1.) Sculpture is essentially the production of a pleasant bossiness
or roundness of surface.

If you look from some distance at these two engravings of Greek coins,
(place the book open, so that you can see the opposite plate three or
four yards off,) you will find the relief on each of them simplifies
itself into a pearl-like portion of a sphere, with exquisitely gradated
light on its surface. When you look at them nearer, you will see that
each smaller portion into which they are divided--cheek, or brow, or
leaf, or tress of hair--resolves itself also into a rounded or undulated
surface, pleasant by gradation of light. Every several surface is
delightful in itself, as a shell, or a tuft of rounded moss, or the
bossy masses of distant forest would be. That these intricately
modulated masses present some resemblance to a girl's face, such as the
Syracusans imagined that of the water-goddess Arethusa, is entirely a
secondary matter; the primary condition is that the masses shall be
beautifully rounded, and disposed with due discretion and order.

22. (2.) It is difficult for you, at first, to feel this order and
beauty of surface, apart from the imitation. But you can see there is a
pretty disposition of, and relation between, the projections of a
fir-cone, though the studded spiral imitates nothing. Order exactly the
same in kind, only much more complex; and an abstract beauty of surface
rendered definite by increase and decline of light--(for every curve of
surface has its own luminous law, and the light and shade on a parabolic
solid differs, specifically, from that on an elliptical or spherical
one)--it is the essential business of the sculptor to obtain; as it is
the essential business of a painter to get good color, whether he
imitates anything or not. At a distance from the picture, or carving,
where the things represented become absolutely unintelligible, we must
yet be able to say, at a glance, "That is good painting, or good
carving."

And you will be surprised to find, when you try the experiment, how
much the eye must instinctively judge in this manner. Take the front of
San Zenone, for instance, Plate I. You will find it impossible, without
a le