acquired that active play of the limbs, that pliability and elasticity of the joints, which must have rendered the most complete models of manly grace and symmetry; while the virgins in their dances, and other rural amusements, so warmly colored by the old poets, artlessly discovered those unstudied charms, that native unconscious elegance and ease, which the skilful hand of the painter, or sculptor, readily transferred to a Helen or Venus.

Other causes may, perhaps, be assigned for the very florishing state of the arts at that particular period. How far moral and physical causes operate on the genius of an age, has been a subject of inquiry frequently discussed from the days of Velleius Paterculus to our own. Certain it is, that at particular

revolutions of time, some kind of supernatural influence, or, as it were, some celestial emanation, seems to descend on a particular people, lights up their invention, heightens and spiritualises their imagination, and calls into life and action their dormant faculties. Genius will ever demand a friendly soil to florish and dilate itself, while, like the sensitive plant, it ever shrinks and sickens at the rude touch of tyranny and oppression. Phidias, who stands first in this illustrious line of artists, fortunately arose at a juncture well calculated for a display of his admirable abilities. Greece now began, for a while, to respire, after a dreadful series of domestic troubles and foreign devastations. Pericles, who at this time had the sole guidance of the republic, to his consummate knowledge as a statesman, united, as a man of letters, the most unbounded attachment to the liberal arts. Comprehending in his more solid cares for the public weal, a subordinate view to its splendor and magnificence, he studied by the grandeur of its ornaments to render Athens worthy of the appellation it afterwards received, the eye of Greece; whilst the various artists he employed, conscious that without his powerful call they might long have languished in obscurity, seemed to vie with each other in the most ample exertion of their talents. The successors of Phidias, Lysippus, and Praxiteles, were ushered into fame and distinction by a concurrence of circumstances equally fortunate.

The career of the Barbarians had been effectually checked

by Philip and Alexander, nor were the civil wars of the petty states of a nature sensibly to retard the progress of the arts. The Abbé du Bos nicely distinguishes between those wars, which affecting the liberty or property of a people, must necessarily by their grievous consequences entail destruction on the arts, and those struggles for a nominal conquest, where the law of nations being closely kept in sight, the arts are little or not materially concerned. Both Philip and his son, by their rapid and extensive conquests, had gained new and distant worlds, interested the passions, warmed and elevated the imagination, of their countrymen. On any suspension of war, men of genius were warmly patronised and caressed in a splendid and magnificent court, where Asiatic spoils began already to introduce a refined and elegant luxury. The same combination of causes that produced a Lysippus, or a Praxiteles, produced also a Demosthenes, a Xenophon, a Thucydides, a Sophocles, and a Theocritus. Poetry, Painting, and Sculpture, with every other liberal art, at this auspicious era enjoyed one common prosperity, while the productions of each served as mirrors reciprocally to reflect the merit of its sister professions. Now it was that art and genius by their respective performances held up virtue and merit in the most conspicuous point of view, gave the great and good to live beyond a mortal date, and peopled the cities of Greece with heroes and demi-gods. By a custom that afforded the most salutary encouragement to every virtue either public or private, the most eminent works of art were in their annual games and solemnities exposed to the eyes of all Greece, and censured or approved by universal suffrage; they were afterwards conspicuously placed in Porticos or Temples, where they formed at once a noble spectacle, and a perpetual spur to public virtue. Every, even the meanest, individual was interested, and on beholding the consecrated statues of his countrymen and ancestors, must feel his heart expand at the inspiriting recollection, that by equal desert he might ensure to himself an equal immortality. We turn with regret from a view so flattering to humanity, and stretching our eye a little onwards perceive a mist of ignorance and barbarism overclouding the prospect. Under the successors of Alexander, the Empire became, as it were disjointed; and by the decline

of liberty and national virtue, the natural bond and cement of the arts was imperceptibly dissolved. The public spirit of the Greeks was now gradually transformed into selfish cunning, their wit and learning into trick and fraud, and their greatness of soul melted down to the most abject degree of Asiatic servility. The baneful influence of this fatal degeneracy was universal, and had so destructively pervaded the moral and political system, that, totally unmanned by their vices, the measure of their ruin was at length easily completed in the defeat of Perseus, when the exiled arts, gladly following the standard of the conqueror, gained a new establishment in Italy. Rome for the first five centuries after her foundation, actuated solely by a martial enthusiasm, and intent on the acquisition of a more extended territory, studied no ornaments but trophies and triumphal decorations. Even these wore the savage com. plexion of the times, and consisted only of a rough-hewn post, on which hung the bloody spoils of the enemy. But about the time of the second Punic war, Marcellus, by the conquest of Syracuse, a city richly adorned with every work of art, opened a precious mine of Grecian elegancies. Scipio, Paulus Æmilius, and Mummius, by their respective victories, added whatever was rare or beautiful in Asia, Macedon, or Corinth. These quick importations gradually introduced an acquired taste, which ripened at last into au insatiable avidity, that ransacked the most distant provinces and kingdoms for the reliques of antiquity. Their own productions, however, were yet so few and inconsiderable, that by the evidence of contemporary historians they adopted the old Greek or Etruscan statues to perpetuate their own national and domestic occurrences. As an incontestible proof of this, we read that Clodius, after the banishment of Cicero, on the ruins of his palace dedicated to Liberty a statue, which in its original state had represented a Boeotian Courtezan. But on the accession of Augustus to the imperial throne, the arts took daily deeper root, and the ingenious artificers of Greece were warmly invited from all quarters. That great prince, by a well-placed liberality, fixed in his court a brilliant constellation of wits and learned men, too dear and familiar to every classical reader, to require an enumeration. A Cicero at Rome, and a noble bust of Agrippa,

still preserved at Florence, show to what perfection Sculpture had then arrived, while Architecture received at the same time its most finished improvements under Vitruvius. Nerva, Trajan, and the Antonines, in some measure recovered the arts from that violent shock they had sustained by a succession of bad and ignorant Emperors after Augustus. That precious monument, Trajan's pillar, the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, and the bust of Caracalla, are generally esteemed the last efforts and expiring struggles of Roman Sculpture. Its descent was afterwards so rapid, that in the reign of Constantine, on the erection of his triumphal arch, the workmen, from their incapacity to supply suitable ornaments, stripped Trajan's pillar, and by a most unnatural misapplication transferred to the arch many of those figures, whose merit was merely local and appropriated. We are told by authors of the fourth century, that there were then to be seen in Rome as many statues as inhabitants a very sufficient and obvious reason, that so few should now remain, is suggested by the recollection of those merciless persecutions they suffered from the bigotry of the Iconoclasts, who, under the specious pretext of abolishing all possible objects of idolatrous worship, indiscriminately broke or defaced every statue or picture, the most valuable or admired. From the incursion of the Northern ravagers, all Europe, for many centuries, appears to have become one vast theatre of war and confusion. The history of these tempestuous times presents little to our view but a tragical scene of poisonings and assassinations, of murdered Popes and Emperors. The arts, comprehended in the general wreck, for ages lay buried in the ruins of learning and civilisation.

After this long and dark night, Sculpture, roused by the awakening call of Leo, began again to rear her head, and once more counted in her train of Votaries some inconsiderable names. Vasari, indeed, in the proem to his valuable work, has rescued from oblivion some more early Sculptures, whose merit, from our general attachment to the age of Leo, is often entirely, though unjustly disregarded; but all, like lesser stars, vanish and fade away before the transcendent beauties of a Michael Angelo. To this great master have all succeeding ages looked up as the genuine archetype of excellence, viewing

with a distant and submissive veneration those noble works, which by their sublime mixture of elegance, character, and expression, seem to have borrowed almost a Grecian perfection. One common gloom of ignorance and barbarism overshadowed at this time both France and England. Their architecture was gothic, their painting confined to glass, and their attempts in Sculpture to a degree rude and imperfect. Francis, indeed, who in his visits to Italy had imbibed the principles of a more sound and cultivated taste, while he personally encouraged and employed both Rafaelli and M. Angelo, was by his agents at Florence forming a collection that comprised not only antiques, but the works of the most celebrated moderns. Primatticcio and Vignola, commissioned by him, had moulded at Rome the Venus, Laocoön, and Cleopatra, and other famous remains of ancient skill. France thus receiving the art almost in a state of maturity, and being assisted by such an ample variety of the most excellent models, we are less surprised, that within a century and a half, the French Sculpture should have attained so eminent a rank. The reign not unfrequently styled the age of Lewis XIV. is by historians of that nation imagined and painted as one of those uncommon efforts of nature, which gives birth to its most rare and distinguished productions. That great Monarch saw laboring for his immortality, in conjunction with Poussin and Le Brun, a Bernini, whom, by a most princely donation, he had invited from Rome, and a Gerardon, a native and most brilliant ornament of his own kingdom. France will for ever boast with pride and rapture the Baths of Apollo, and Tomb of Richelieu, those works of this her favorite son which have placed her sons but one degree below the most daring flights of ancient Greece. Puget immortalised himself by his masterly bust of Milo. Theoden and Le Gros have, even in Italy, the seat of the arts, left such invaluable monuments of their excellence, as will not only for ages blazon to the world their universal merit, but clearly prove they were not dragged into fame by a mere national predilection. This observation will more forcibly strike us, when we recollect, that in the beginning of that very age, Italy possessed her own Algerdi, whose truth of composition, and greatness of design