LOOKING-GLASS. 
37 
ing the countenance, and at the fame time injur- 
ing the health. 
Plato confidered in the firft rank of Nature’s 
bleffings, a fuperior underftanding j and, in his efti- 
mation, beauty had the fecond place ; for he pre- 
ferred it to all the gifts of fortune, birth, and power. 
— “ If,” fays he, “ Youth and Beauty had Pru- 
dence on their fide, they would be ftill greater ob- 
je61s of adoration.” 
The Greeks eretted temples to Venus ^ whom 
they worfliipped under different names. 
In their language there is but one word, CofmoSy 
to fignify the World, Beauty, and Symmetry. It is 
to their high idea of perfeftion that we muft attri- 
bute the fuperiority of every work that is come to 
us from their hands j no lefs vifible in their poetry, 
than in the monuments of arts which have efcaped 
the ravages of time, wars, and revolutions. 
The inference to be drawn from thefe reflexions 
is this, — that the befl: moral writers, the moft ce- 
lebrated poets, and the moft perfeX architeXs, were 
cotemporary with thofe fculptors and painters, who 
likewife ftood the foremoft in repute in their pro- 
felTions. Thus Homer, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, 
Efehylus, Demofthenes, Sophocles, and Euripides, 
were the friends and rivals in fame of Phidias, 
Apollodorus, Agathias, Agefander, Parrhafius, Pro- 
togenes, Zeuxis, and Apelles. In order to render 
wifdom amiable, that ingenious people deified this 
3 • attribute 
