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    untouched , and there ? is yet a new and wider field of influence in the developement of soul and expression , of which the ancients caught only remote glimpses . Beautiful agency of the mind of man ! that can transform even the- marble or the rock into an instrument to soften and refine the heart of man . Who speaks of the high and palmy state of the arts having departed for ever ?

    They are now . nearer to that state than in the most glorious days of olden Greece , or in the times when Lorenzo the Magnificent fostered the genius of art in whatever form she might approach him . Their palmy state is when , added to the splendour of their creations , the universality of their influence is most widely felt . Thanks to the ever-multiplying mould , there is no longer

    exclusive possession to those who exchange the yellow demon in their purses for the ^ angel of light from the artist ' s chisel , and think they have rendered mighty service by their munificent patronage . There are-thousands of eyes and hearts burning and beating to do honour to the poet-artist's creations . Let him not waste the sacred fire on the unhallowed altar of Mammon , let him not

    stoop to execute the inferior order of an inferior mind , or break the mould that might have gone forth over the wide world , presenting a rich dower of pleasure to each beholder ; break it , away from the sight of the many , at the command of a self-loving one . Let him look back at what the arts have been , and take courage to look forward at what they may become . Let him remember the time when the first attempt at sculpture was the rude wooden

    carving of the savage , when the mere external form of man was all they ambitioned ; or if they departed from this , and intermingled their own imagination with more servile imitation , it was but to create deformity of the most monstrous kind . Let him pass on to the days , when exactness of physical imitation Was its highest attainment ; when to copy muscle , bone , and vein , was

    reckoned a great achievement , when there was a certain degree of power of an inferior kind , but where all the nobler attributes of man remained unwakened . When a people could so degrade themselves as to exalt fighting men into gods , is the inferiority of their arts to be wondered at ? Then came the time , when to this

    physical exactness was added intellectual greatness , —the mind breathing throug h the marble . The stately forms of the Greek and Roman sculptor ; the square brow , the firm precisely-chiselled lips , the calm imperturbable grandeur of their attitudes , the rich draperies with majesty in their evfery fold , making it scarcely a marvel that their creators of old deified the work of their own

    hands . But it is not a God of . majesty who is the object of our devotion . It is a God all love ; and we turn from the cold stateliness of antique sculpture , waiting for the advent of that day when the ever living sonl shall be seen brvathitig from out the marble , in a thousana , differing developements of that Divine love which awakened it into life , and bade it go forth to create a

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    Buy Images . 761

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  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1834, page 761, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2639/page/13/