beauty was generally made to consist in the moderateness of their size. They were generally a little higher than in nature. The abdomen was without prominence. The legs and knees of youthful figures are rounded with softness and smoothness, and unmarked by muscular movements. The proportion of the limbs was longer than in the preceding period. In the male and female figure, the foot was rounded in its form; in the female the toes are delicate, and have dimples over their first joints gently marked.

It is evident that this type of beauty of form, adopted by the Grecian sculptors, is in unison with, and exhibits a marked analogy to the type of face and form of the Greeks themselves; for, as Sir Charles Bell observes, the Greek face is a fine oval, the forehead full and carried forward, the eyes large, the nose straight, the lips and chin finely formed; in short, the forms of the head and face have been the type of the antique, and of all which we most admire.*

The sculptors of this age, instead of aiming at an abstract unattainable ideal, studied nature in its choicest forms, and attained the beautiful by selecting and concentrating in one those charms which are found diffused over all. They avoided the representation of all violent motions and perturbations of the passions, which would have completely marred that expression of serene repose which is a prominent characteristic of the beautiful period of Greek sculpture. Indeed, the chief object of the Greek sculptor was the representation of the beautiful alone, and to this principle he made character, expression, costume, and everything else subordinate.

Lysippus, the successor of Praxiteles and Scopas, was a contemporary of Alexander the Great. He contributed to advance their style by the peculiar fulness, roundness, and harmonious general effect by which it appears that his works were characterised. His school exhibited a strong naturalistic tendency, a

*Tinos, Naxos, Samos, and other favoured spots in the Ægean, still furnish types of that glorious race which gave models to Phidias and Praxiteles. In the men there may still be seen beauty of form and the most ample development of the muscles and limbs-perfect symmetry united with manly strength. In the women the straight brow and nose, the delicately formed mouth and chin, the smooth and rounded neck, losing itself in the flowing curve of the shoulders and bearing, like a pedestal of Parian marble, the exquisitely-shaped head, the graceful carriage, and the well-proportioned limbs.-Quarterly Rev., Vol. 94.

closer imitation of nature, leading to many refinements in detail, It was unquestionably greater in portrait than in ideal works. Pliny thus speaks of his style: "He is considered to have contributed very greatly to the art of the statuary by expressing the details of the hair, and by making the head smaller than had been done by the ancients, and the body more graceful and less bulky, a method by which his statues were made to appear taller."

The portrait statues of Alexander the Great by Lysippus were very numerous. The great king would only allow himself to be modelled by Lysippus. The head of Alexander, as the young Ammon on the coins of Lysimachus, is said to have been designed by him. An athlete, scraping his body with a strigil, named the άogvoμevos, was the most famous of the bronze statues of Lysippus. The statue of an athlete in the Vatican, in a similar position, is supposed to be a marble copy of the original bronze of Lysippus; though an inferior work, it illustrates the statements of Pliny regarding the proportions adopted by Lysippus-a small head and the body long and slim. The basreliefs also on the monument of Lysicrates, representing the story of Dionysus and the Tyrrhenian pirates, present all the characteristic features of the school of Lysippus. It was erected in the archonship of Euænetus, B.C. 335.

The canon of Polycletus began to be generally adopted at this period. It was followed by Lysippus, who called the Doryphoros of that artist his master. In his practice of dealing with the heads and limbs of his figures, Lysippus was followed by Silanion and Euphranor, and his authority may be said to have governed the school of Greece to a late period of the art.

Pliny tells us that Euphranor was the first who represented heroes with becoming dignity, and who paid particular attention to proportion. He made, however, in the generality of instances, the bodies somewhat more slender and the heads larger. His most celebrated statue was a Paris, which expressed alike the judge of the goddesses, the lover of Helen, and the slayer of Achilles. The very beautiful sitting figure of Paris, in marble, in the Vatican, is, no doubt, a copy of this work.

Subsequently to these sculptors we have Chares, the Rhodian, who constructed the famous colossus of Helios at the entrance of the harbour of Rhodes, which was 105 feet high. It appears

there is no authority for the common statement that its legs extended over the mouth of the harbour.

Of the later Asiatic or Rhodian schools we have the famous groups of the Laocoon and of Dircè tied to a Bull, commonly called the Toro Farnese. In both of these the dramatic element is predominant, and the tragic interest is not appreciated. In the Laocoon consummate skill is shown in the mastery of execution; but if the object of the artist was to create pity or awe, he has drawn too much attention to his power of carving marble. The Laocoon was executed, according to Pliny, by Agesander, Polydorus and Athenodorus, natives of Rhodes. This group, now in the Vatican, was found in the baths of Titus. From the evidence of an antique gem, on which is engraved a representation of this group, we find the right arm of the Laocoon has been wrongly restored. In the gem the hand of Laocoon is in contact with his head, and not, as restored by Giovanni da Montorsoli, raised high.

The Farnese Bull, a work in which we possess the most colossal group of antiquity, was executed by Apollonius and Tauriscus of Tralles. To the same school belongs the Dying Gladiator, who unquestionably represents one of the Gauls who were defeated in Asia Minor, and not, as usually supposed, a combatant who died in the amphitheatre. It is remarkable for the entire absence of ideal representation, and for its complete individuality and close imitation of nature. This statue is probably a copy of one which formed part of a group by Pyromachus, who executed several groups, and large compositions of battle scenes for Attalus, king of Pergamus, to celebrate his decisive victory over the Gauls (B.c. 240). The originals were in bronze.

To the later Athenian school belong probably the Belvidere Torso, so much admired by Michael Angelo, the Farnese Hercules, the Venus de Medici, and the Fighting Gladiator. The Belvidere Torso is now considered to be a copy by Apollonius, the son of Nestor, of the Hercules of Lysippus, and probably executed in the Macedonian period. The Farnese Hercules is so exaggerated in its style as to have been deemed a work as late as the Roman empire. According to Flaxman, the Venus de Medici is a deteriorated variety or repetition of a Venus of Praxiteles. It is now generally admitted that it is a work of the latest Macedonian period, probably by Cleomenes, whose

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name appears on its base. The Fighting Gladiator bears the name of Agasias of Ephesus. From the attitude of the figure it is clear that the statue represents not a gladiator, but a warrior contending with a mounted combatant, probably an Athenian, warding off a blow from a centaur.

The Macedonian age, to which most of these statues belonged, commenced with Alexander the Great, and terminated with the absorption of Greek art by the Romans.

Decline.-Art having in the two previous periods reached its culminating point of perfection; as is the law of all development, when a culminating point is reached, a downward tendency and a period of decline begins, for the cycle of development must be completed and the stages of rise, progress, maturity, decline and decay run through.

No exact date, however, can be assigned to the beginning of the stage of decline; no sharp line of demarcation can be pointed out dividing one stage from the other. The decline was so gradual that there was an inevitable blending of the two. We perceive evident signs of decline in the fourth stage, while, in the fifth, or stage of decline, we sometimes meet some noble works of art partaking of the perfect style of the earlier periods. A period of decline inevitably and invariably follows an age of maturity and perfection, as Mr. Lecky observes, "The sculptor and the painter of the age of Praxiteles precipitated art into sensuality; both of them destroyed its religious character, both of them raised it to high æsthetic perfection, but in both cases that perfection was followed by a speedy decline." Müller remarks, "The creative activity, the real central point of the entire activity of art, which fashions peculiar forms for peculiar ideas, must have flagged in its exertions when the natural circle of ideas among the Greeks had received complete plastic embodiment, or it must have been morbidly driven to abnormal inventions. We find, therefore, that art, during this period, with greater or less degrees of skill in execution, delighted now in fantastical, now in effeminate productions, calculated merely to charm the senses. And even in the better and nobler works of the time there was still on the whole something -not, indeed, very striking to the eye, but which could be felt by the natural sense, something which distinguished them from the earlier works-the striving after effect." The spirit of imita

tion marked the later portion of this period of decline. The sculptors of this age, despairing of equalling the productions of the former age, gave themselves up completely to servile imitation. The imitation was naturally inferior to the original, and each succeeding attempt at imitation was but a step lower in degradation of the art. When they ceased to study nature they thought to repair the deterioration of the beauty of form by the finish of the parts; and in a still later period they gave, instead of a grandeur of style, an exaggeration of form. Lastly, being utterly unable to cope with their predecessors in the sculpture of statues, they had recourse to the manufacture of busts and portraits, which they executed in countless numbers. The art reached its lowest ebb, and thus the cycle of the development of Greek sculpture terminated in its last stage-utter decay and degradation.

Roman.-In the very early periods the Romans imitated the Etruscans, for, generally speaking, all the works of the first periods of Rome were executed by Etruscan artists. Their earliest statues of gods were in clay. Etruscan art exercised the greatest influence in Rome, for Rome was adorned with monuments of Etruscan art, in its very infancy; it was a Tuscan called Veturius Mamurius who made the shields (ancilia) of the temple of Numa, and who made, in bronze, the statue of Vertumna, a Tuscan deity, in the suburb of Rome. The Romans owed all their culture to the Etruscans, from whom they learnt the arts of architecture, terra-cotta work, and painting; calling in artists of that more tasteful race when anything of the sort was required for the decoration of their simple edifices. The most ancient monuments of Rome thus corresponded with the contemporaneous style of Etruscan art; there is thus a similarity in the figures; the attributes alone can lead one to distinguish them, as these attributes tell if the statue was connected with the creed or modes of belief of Etruria or Rome. There was not, therefore, any Roman style, properly so called, the only distinction to be remarked is that the statues of the early periods, executed by the Romans, are characterized, like the Romans themselves of the same period, by a beard and long hair. At a late period all the architecture, all the sculpture of the public edifices at Rome, were in the Tuscan style, according to the testimony of Pliny.