On thé Beautiful in the Grecian Statues, 427 
will soften the deformity, and render: that not 
only acceptable, but approved,'and as a beauty 
in the art, which we should fly from with ree 
and horror in the real object. 
So far then we have proceeded in the examin- 
ation of the beautiful, not merely as a prelude to 
our deciding on the excellence of the Grecian 
Statues, though even as! a prelude ‘this ‘appeared 
necessary; for without some: rule founded in 
nature,. all decision on the beautiful in the imita~ 
tive arts of the Greeks, might be considered as 
mere opinion. If we have not erred then in this 
previous analysis, it has appeared that, in the sub- 
ject of the human form, the sentimental and 
the rational judgment of beauty are not discord- 
ant, but that the beautiful as a matter of feeling 
harmonizes with the useful as the end; and as 
an influence from. this, that the perfection of 
beauty as an absolute standard must be looked. 
for in the middle form of the whole. collected 
human race, excluding all whom accident, vio- 
lence, monstrous births, or the extremes of cli- 
mate, food and labour may have disfigured; and 
also in the middle form between the extremes 
of age, in which the subject has not attained to 
or declined from the point of perfection, because 
all the varieties of the human form seem to re- 
spect this medium both of number and age. It 
has also appeared, that in the distribution of 
