and what it is vain or improper to attempt; that it may be clearly and distinctly known what ought to be the great purpose of the sculptor's labours.

Sculpture is an art of much more simplicity and uniformity than painting; it cannot with propriety and the best effect be applied to many subjects. The object of its pursuit may be comprised in two words, form and character; and those qualities are presented to us but in one manner or in one style only; whereas the powers of painting, as they are more various and extensive, so they are exhibited in as great a variety of manners. The Roman, Lombard, Florentine, Venetian, and Flemish schools, all pursue the same end by different means. But sculpture having but one style, can only to one style of painting have any relation; and to this (which is indeed the highest and most dignified that painting can boast) it has a relation so close, that it may be said to be almost the same art operating upon different materials. The sculptors of the last age, from not attending sufficiently to this discrimination of the different styles of painting, have been led into many errors. Though they well knew that they were allowed to imitate, or take ideas for the improvement of their own Art from the grand style of painting, they were not aware that it was not permitted to borrow in the same manner from the ornamental. When they endeavour to copy the picturesque effects, contrasts, or petty excellencies of whatever kind, which not improperly find a place in the inferior branches of painting, they doubtless imagine themselves improving and

the human mind, and retain the accumulated results of ages: for example, when the sculptor has finished his model in the clay, his labours may be said to be at an end; and his work "being as palpable to feeling as to sight," where his eye wont serve, his compasses can reach. But not so the painter: he, having to cope with Nature, and being limited to a flat surface, has to acquire a complete mastery of drawing objects under all the difficulties of foreshortening, so as to make them appear to recede and project without losing their apparent length; he has to acquire an intimate knowledge of chiaro oscuro, so as to assist him in his deception; to tutor his eye by long study to a knowledge and power of colour, with all its intricacies of truth, force, and harmony; and, in short, he must possess many qualities that seldom exist in perfection in one person. But, as a conclusive proof of the greater difficulty, we find that most painters can model, while few sculptors can paint.

extending the boundaries of their art by this imitation; but they are in reality violating its essential character, by giving a different direction to its operations, and proposing to themselves either what is unattainable, or at best a meaner object of pursuit. The grave and austere character of sculpture requires the utmost degree of formality in composition; picturesque contrasts have here no place; every thing is carefully weighed and measured, one side making almost an exact equipoise to the other: a child is not a proper balance to a full grown figure, nor is a figure sitting or stooping a companion to an upright figure.

The excellence of every art must consist in the complete accomplish

2 When sculpture is said to have but one style, of course it is meant the representation of ennobled or purified natural form; for otherwise style, as applied to different eras or nations, it may be various, as the Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Gothic styles, and all having their various peculiarities and character; as applied to the personification of beautified form, it includes selection, and position to place such selection in the most advantageous point of view. The gradual perfection of form to which the Greek sculptors ultimately arrived, seems to have originated in a combination of beautiful nature reduced to certain proportions by the application of scientific principles, which not only defined the human form, but seems to have given laws to the columns and dimensions of their buildings; and if we could get at the truth of the story related by Pliny respecting Apelles drawing a line so as to divide in two that drawn by himself in the first instance, and of the one afterwards drawn by Protogenes, we should no doubt find that the fineness of the line indicated the greater purity of the boundary of the human figure, or of some parts of it; for in all we examine of their sculpture we perceive a geometrical and symmetrical exactness. Now this is not only observable in the height of their figures, and in the gradation from the head to the foot, but also in the gradating lines of the legs and arms, and even of the fingers. Nor is the head divided with more exactness than the hands and feet; and though they have left no written treatises upon the subject, laws can be drawn with certain precision from a contemplation and measurement of their statues; and where they differ one from the other, it will be found it is for the purpose of giving to the figure some of its attributes, derived from a knowledge of comparative anatomy. Let us take, for example, the human foot; on examining, in the first instance, those of many animals, we perceive the toes either very long or very short in proportion; of an equal size nearly, and the claws often long and hooked inwards: now, in rude sculpture, and even in some of the best of the Egyptian, we find little attempt at giving a character of decided variation, but, on the contrary, we see the foot split up with toes of an equal length and thickness; while in Greek sculpture those points characteristic of man are increased, that the affinity to animals may be diminished. In the Greek marbles the great toe is large and apart from the others where the strap of the sandal came; while the others gradually diminish and sweep round to the outside of the foot with the greatest regularity of curve: the

ment of its purpose; and if, by a false imitation of nature, or mean ambition of producing a picturesque effect or illusion of any kind, all the grandeur of ideas which this art endeavours to excite be degraded or destroyed, we may boldly oppose ourselves to any such innovation. If the producing of a deception is the summit of this art, let us at once give to statues the addition of colour; which will contribute more towards accomplishing this end than all those artifices which have been introduced and professedly defended, on no other principle but that of rendering the work more natural. But as colour is universally rejected, every practice liable to the same objection must fall with it. If the business of sculpture were to administer pleasure to ignorance, or a mere entertainment to the senses, the Venus of Medicis might certainly receive much improvement by colour; but the character of Sculpture makes it her duty to afford delight of a different, and perhaps, of a higher kind; the delight resulting from the contemplation of perfect beauty: and this, which is in truth an intellectual pleasure, is in many respects incompatible with what is merely

nails are short and the toes broad at the points, indicative of pressure on the ground. This regularity, and the reduction of the varieties of beautiful Nature to an exact standard of proportion, seems to have been the foundation of all their schools of design in the first epochs; rigid and severe, but gradually subsiding from the hard characteristics of stone to the vivified character of flesh, which we see in perfection in the Elgin marbles. In the earlier stages, sculpture being more conventional, no other test was requisite but correctness, which was judged of by every one who could handle the compasses, but ultimately it emanated from beautiful Nature, which few can see or appreciate, as it embodies variety in uniformity, and can only be measured by an elastic cord. In the later works of the Greeks, the unsophisticated character of the human form seems to have guided the chisel; and had Reynolds lived to witness the Elgin marbles, he would have acknowledged the supremacy of beautiful Nature uncontrolled by the severe line of mathematical exactness: the outline of life, which changes under every respiration, seems to have undulated under the plastic mould of Phidias; and on their arrival in England, when Gregson the boxer was stript before the Theseus, the origin of its excellence was evident to all. This excellence to which sculpture arrived at in the time of Pericles remained entombed amid the ruins of Athens; for though, on the restoration of the art in Rome, the artists evidently were Greek, yet the style was of an earlier period, as we find Roman sculpture more severe and symmetrical, and wanting those delicacies of natural beauty existing in the best Greek statues, and which is strikingly observable in the restored portions of the mutilated antique figures. Of their busts, however, which are admirable, I shall venture to notice in another note.