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STATUES OF THE GREEKS.

ever of majestic, or beautiful, or powerful, the Greek artists could find in the figure of man, they gave to the representations of their Gods.

The Venus de Medicis, the Apollo Belvidere, and the Hercules Farnese are the finest statues now existing every thing that is enchanting in the beauty of a woman, or noble and prepossessing in the figure of a young man, or muscular and robust in the figure of a man who looks as if he could put an end to a lion with a blow of his fist, is comprehended in these three statues: the surnames by which they are called, they have received from the noble families or palaces of modern Italy, by whom or in which they have been preserved.

The Greeks admired more than all the rest the Jupiter which was carved by Phidias: this statue no longer exists: there was something so awful, so venerable, so more than any thing that you could conceive ever to have belonged to a man, in the figure and countenance of this statue, that you could scarcely look at it without exclaiming, "This indeed is a God!"

One of the reasons why the Greeks excelled all other nations in their representations of the human figure, is that they were probably the finest race of men that ever existed: this they owed in part to a famous institution among them known by the name of the Grecian games: these games consisted in wrestling, running, boxing, throwing the quoit, and other trials of skill: in consequence of the fineness of their climate, they practised these games for the most part naked: they rubbed themselves with oil, that they might render their limbs supple and pliant: they plunged in rivers and seas, that they might brace

STATUES OF THE GREEKS.

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their muscles: the garments they wore had no ligatures to compress and destroy the strength and grace and free play of the muscles; while modern nations, by garters, and buckles, and waistbands, and kneebands, and wristbands, and collars, and fifty barbarous contrivances, are continually spoiling the flowing and active forms with which nature has endowed us: it is not a hundred years ago, since a child, as soon as it came into the world, was swaddled and swathed and pinched with I know not how many yards of broad, strong binding, so that he could scarcely move a limb or a muscle of his whole body: it is not fifty years ago, since women, what they called, laced for a shape; that is, tried to be in figure as near as possible like a wasp, the two parts of the body of which are joined together as it were by a thread.

It is not wonderful that the Greek artists, who every day beheld their countrymen naked, and whose countrymen employed such powerful means for improving the freedom and strength of their limbs, should have excelled much more in the manufacture of statues than we do.

It is not wonderful, since the Greek artists made such exquisite statues, and the Greek poets, Homer and others, have written such fine things about their Gods, that a learned man cannot recollect the Greek mythology, without the most delicious and animated emotions.

I wish I could lead you into the Pantheon at Rome: I mean such as it was in the times of the Grecian religion, for the walls of the building still exist: the Gods of the Romans were the same as of the Greeks: the Pantheon was a rotunda, one hundred and sixty feet in diameter,

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STATUES OF THE GREEKS.

and the same in height; it had no light but what it received from a circular aperture in the middle of the vaulted roof: the rafters were brass; the front of brass gilt: the roof of silver; and the inside marble: this temple was dedicated to all the Gods, and contained in its circumference the statues of them all: if you could see it as it was in the time of the emperor Augustus, you would then see the Grecian religion in all its glory.

CHAP. II.

GENIUS OF THE GRECIAN RELIGION.

OF ABSTRACTION.

The Religion of the Greeks gives Sense and Life to Inanimate Objects.-Personifies Abstractions.-Nature of Abstraction explained.

ANOTHER cause of the agreeable nature of the Grecian religion was that it gave animation and life to all existence: it had its Naiads, Gods of the rivers, its Tritons and Nereids, Gods of the seas, its Satyrs, Fauns and Dryads, Gods of the woods and the trees, and its Boreas, Eurus, Auster and Zephyr, Gods of the winds.

The most important of the senses of the human body are seeing and hearing: we love, as Pope says, to (6 see God in clouds, and hear him in the wind:" it is a delightful thing to take a walk in fields, and look at the skies and the trees and the corn-fields and the waving grass, to observe the mountains and the lakes and the rivers and the seas, to smell the new-mown hay, to inhale the fresh and balmy breeze, and to hear the wild warbling of the birds: but a man does not enjoy these in their most perfect degree of pleasure, till his imagination becomes a little visionary: the human mind does not love a landscape without life and without a soul: we are delighted to talk to the objects around us, and to feel as if they understood and sympathised with us: we create, by the power of fancy, a human form and a hu

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ABSTRACTION EXPLAINED.

man voice in those scenes, which to a man of literal understanding appear dead and senseless.

One further source of the agreeable nature of the Grecian religion was, that it not only gave sense and life to all inanimate objects; it also personified abstractions.

Abstraction is a very curious operation of the human mind, and well worthy of consideration: we call the people about us by names, John Williams, George Brown, David Smith, and the animals with which we are familiar, as Pompey, Tray, Carlo, Fidelle, Bijou: there is nothing abstract in that.

But we have other names, not suited to a single individual, but to all individuals of the same nature, as man, woman, boy, girl, dog, horse, rabbit, partridge: this is the beginning of abstraction: when I say man, I do not mean a tall man, or a short man, a fat man, or a thin man, a negro, or a European: now there never was a man, who was neither tall nor short, nor fat, nor thin, nor black, nor white: yet a child, when he is familiar with the word, knows very well how to apply it to all the different sorts of men he sees, and is in no danger of applying it to a cow, a horse, or a bird.

There is another sort of abstraction more refined than this, as in the words grief, fear, war, peace, life, death, &c.: these words are descriptive of nothing that has form or colour: yet they are words of very convenient use, and greatly help us in reasoning and conversation.

Poetry affects the passions of those who read it, much more than prose does: for this plain reason, that poetry deals chiefly in images drawn from the sight, the hearing, and the other senses: