‘On the Beautiful in the Grecian Statues. 494 
excellent in the art of statuary but what was of 
Greck fabrication. Their admiration knew no 
bounds ; and though of the statues preserved to 
us, many are of an age’ posterior to the earlier 
Ceesars, it is probable that they were all the work~ 
manship of Grecian genius. The school, ‘de- 
nominated the Roman, though the Roman em# 
pire had been long extinct, was formed on the 
basis of Greek art ; it aspired to no higher honor 
than to be the imitator of the antient Greek; 
yet inimical as imitation is supposed to be to 
great exertion, this school is allowed to have sur- 
passed all other moderns in the beauty and 
character of its figures. While other subsequent 
schools of statuary, which have wrought from 
their own ideas, and been laborious enough in 
the éxecution, have each exhibited less beauty, 
less ‘correctness, less conformity: to what every 
one feels to be to x#Aoy in the original. This 
‘concurrent testimony may almost be allowed to 
be decisive. Among the artists of Italy, and 
‘SiC edit gto them; in other countries, there are 
WHO appear to “have devoted ‘their whole lives to 
the'study ‘of ‘Whatever’ is’ most’ beautiful in nature 
Or‘in art; aifa°if their unqualified ‘deference to 
the Greek be'not adinitted, I wonder from whom, 
With ‘a ‘more 'réfined’ and better futistied mind, 
we Mayexpect a juster sentenice! 
VOL. Vv. P 
