424 On the Beautiful in the Grecian Statues. 
though the difference of their age be but very. 
inconsiderable, yet would each, independant of 
all regard to the part which each is designed to 
sustain in riper years, be expected to exhibit a 
difference of form and aspect. In the. full- 
blown rose of Lucretia, and the opening bud of 
_ Virginia, which equally enflamed the passions 
of Tarquin and the Decemvir, and led them to the 
perpetration of the most daring and dangerous 
crimes, though in each we imagine something that 
answers to our perfect idea of female beauty, yet 
in each we look for a delicate discrimination of 
exterior, something appropriate of form and 
feature, expressive of their respective age and 
situation. 
In the domestic groupe of mother, wife, child- 
ren and attendants, which issued from Rome to 
avert the vengeance of Coriolanus from his 
country; if imagination give a beautiful figure 
to each, it will be a beauty proper to the age of 
each, and proper also to the relation which each 
bears to the avenging hero, and to the shades of 
affection and interest with which each must be 
“impressed from all the circumstances of the 
interview; while in Coriolanus himself, that 
which we should acknowledge as beautiful and 
proper in his figure would very materially differ 
from that of all the preceding. 
_ There is therefore indubitably, as is generally 
