Nothing can be conceived more august than his whole presence and attitude, nothing finer than his expression of pride, a pride innate in him, and a part of his godhead, which must rise too much above all opposition to contend. The Python is just slain-but the god is unmoved; there is no agitation, no exultation, no effort: he has raised his face from the vanquished, as if failure or opposition were sounds, not things; accidents which could not occur to one of his sunlike and immortal nature. The form of Apollo can scarcely be termed delicate, if, indeed, by that term, anything allied to weakness or effeminacy (as in the Perseus of Canova) be implied. His figure, on the contrary, is swelled to the finest, fullest proportions of a man, in

The prime of manhood, where youth ended;

and the whole of the upper part of that figure how noble, how full of confidence and energy, the anatomy of whose life is so finely shadowed forth, that we almost fancy a current of "ethereal ichor" runs beneath the marble; we almost expect to see the god recover his bow in his half-raised right arm, and confront the spectator, before ascending into heaven! Nor can anything be imagined more graceful than his clustering hair, which, rich and ray-like, curls round his forehead, but not hiding his temples, and descending, throws out (as the painters express it) his arching neck in full and beautiful relief.

The Apollo has been designated a mere copy, because the marble, it is observed, is from Carrara, not from Paros. Ca

nova thought the original of bronze, but, more especially, the drapery. Visconti, on the contrary, (a first-rate authority,) denies entirely the Apollo being wrought from Carrara marble, contending that it came from some other Grecian quarry. To all this vain andrestless cavilling, is it not suf ficient to reply, we feel that divine Image could not be a copy, having the mens divinior stamped, as it is, in its every line; but such have ever been the conflicting currents of opinion, that, age after age, fret away their hour around the bases of the immutable and eternal monuments of genius.* JOURNAL.

XLII.

Model of human beauty in repose :

The Antinous is an image of still and perfect beauty, of beauty in its most entire repose. His eyes are bent towards the ground; a languor, a sense of depression, almost approaching to pain, appears stamped in the expression of his features, yet not a line of their polished perfection is discomposed. He may be called an image of the perfection of manly beauty, which, for a woman to look on, and not to love, would be impossible. I observed that it was chiefly the men who clustered round the Apollo; the silent gazers on

The locks of the Apollo recal to us those graceful lines in the Feast of the Poets:

And if, as he shook back his hair in its cluster,

A curl fell athwart them and darken'd their lustre,

A sprinkle of gold through the duskiness came,

Like the sun through a tree, when he's setting in flame!

the Antinous were, almost always, women; the one, awes, dazzles, repels; the other, draws, melts, subdues; woman is always in the right; one feeling inspired from the heart, is more rewarding than all the sublimer abstractions of the colder imagination.

XLIII.

A shrine as its own form.

From an idea that perfection in form constituted the same in faculty, the sages of Greece held corporeal beauty amongst the foremost of the gifts of God, and regarded its possessor as being, equally with the possessor of superior wisdom, a special favourite of heaven; they sometimes paid its owner (as in the example of Antinous) divine honours, and raised to his memory not Statues only, but Altars.

XLIV.

Behold the test of human agony :

The place of the discovery of the Laocoon (the baths of Titus) identifies it with the group described by Pliny-he gives it the pre-eminence over all other sculpture; but how interesting are his own words :-"There are many sculptors "whose fame is less generally spread, because the number "of artists employed made against their celebrity in great

The Greeks called a beautiful object raλov, quasi кaλovv, i. e. calling on the soul, which receives it instantly, and welcomes it as something natural.

"works; for there is no one person to enjoy the renown, "and where there are more than one, they cannot all obtain "an equal name: as, for instance, the Laocoon, a work which

may be preferred to all others either in painting or statuary. "The whole was made out of one block, the father, his chil"dren, and the wonderful folds of the serpents, according to "a vote of the council, by Agesander, Polydorus, and Athe"nodorus, Rhodian sculptors of the first rank."

I owe an additional note from Winklemann to the interest of a highly esteemed literary friend:

"As the depths of the Ocean remain always at rest, let "the surface be ever so agitated, even so the expression in "the figures of the Greeks denotes, through every variety of emotion, a great and tranquil soul.

"This grandeur of soul, combined with the most vehement affliction, is visible in the countenance of the Laocoon: "and not in the countenance alone. The pain which dis"plays itself in every muscle and sinew of the body, and "which fancy might almost detect in the very contraction "of the abdomen, independent of the countenance and other "parts, is yet expressed without extravagance, either in the "face or in the attitude. He does not, like the Laocoon of

Virgil, give utterance to a terrific shriek: the aperture of "the mouth does not admit of this. The sound he breathes "is rather, as Sadoleto describes it, the stifled sigh of an"guish. Bodily pain and grandeur of soul are divided with "equal strength and accurate balance throughout the whole "construction of the figure. Laocoon suffers-but he suffers

"like the Philoctetes of Sophocles. The spectacle of his "affliction, while it penetrates the soul, inspires us with a wish "that we too might be able to bear afflictions with equal mag"nanimity."

Such are the fine and liberal criticisms that almost magnify the subject which they only profess to illustrate. JOURNAL.

XLIX.

Behold the fighting Gladiator stand:

This admirable Statue is, at present, in the Musée, at Paris: I have taken the license of putting it in its place.

LIII.

Sits the great Hebrew Lawgiver :

How much have we not heard and read of the colossal Moses of Michael Angelo: we ally ourselves naturally to greatness, and we are almost grateful when we feel that our expectations are not overwrought. What nervous arms, and solemn front, the Sculptor has given him and what a breadth

:

Of Atlantéan shoulders, fit to bear

The weight of mightiest monarchies !

The beard of the Prophet hides his chest ; how much of imposing majesty is there in the turn of his head! His robes are nobly disposed in their colossal folds; the whole figure, in its grand repose, conveying the impression of immovable tranquillity, of austere simplicity, of strength, of dignity, and of power. JOU Rnal.