THE BEAUTIFUL. 115 



Physically he seems adapted to command respect rather 

 than admiration. His beauty is symbolical. As the knit 

 muscle expresses strength, we fear it as a foe, or trust it 

 as a friend. The strong chest expands like something 

 safe to lean upon. The capacious front is the natural 

 symbol of god-like wisdom for command and security. 

 The features acquire interest as they become interpreters 

 of the calm or the tumult, the tenderness or the rage, the 

 joy or anguish, which reigns within the temple. The 

 manly models of Greek sculpture excite our admiration 

 only as they recall the beauty of heroism, or fidelity, or 

 patriotism, or some other noble virtue. The Apollo Bel- 

 videre, so often assumed as the type of manly beauty, 

 has neither the moral symbolism, the proportions, nor 

 the mien of the manly ideal. What beauty the statue 

 possesses is feminine, a good Apollo, but not a man. 

 The stalwart strength and intellectual resolve of manly 

 character are not expressed. In the famous cartoons of 

 Raphael we have the opposite extreme. Muscle is de- 

 veloped to brutal proportions. The rayless, prehistoric 

 countenances above such extravagant frames are the most 

 fitting harmonies which I have been able to discover, for 

 instance, in the " Miraculous Draught of Fishes. 11 How 

 much truer an instinct has Raphael disclosed in his Sis- 

 tine Madonna. 



Age has its own beauty. True is it, indeed, that the 

 beauty of old age is also, to a large extent, symbolical. 

 It is a picture of a time grown venerable. It is a 

 symbol of experience and wisdom. It is our admoni- 

 tion of the decay and silence which come to all of us. 

 It is a sunlight gleam from another world through a 

 rift in the clouds which obscure our mortal vision. But 



