onventional bias, and also to have
acquired the more difficult power of analyzing their models, so as to
contemplate them in their separate elements, have so often varied as
to their ideas of Beauty? Whether artists have really the power thus
ascribed to them, we shall not here inquire; it is no doubt, if
possible, their business to acquire it. But, admitting it as true, we
deny the position: they do not change their ideas. They can have but
one Idea of Beauty, inasmuch as that Idea is but a specific phase of
one immutable Principle,--if there be such a principle; as we shall
hereafter endeavour to show. Nor can they have of it any
essentially different, much less opposite, conceptions: but their
_apprehension_ of it may undergo many apparent changes, which,
nevertheless, are but the various degrees that only mark a fuller
conception; as their more extended acquaintance with the higher
outward assimilants of Beauty brings them, of course, nearer to a
perfect realization of the preexisting Idea. By _perfect_, here,
we mean only the nearest approximation by man. And we appeal to every
artist, competent to answer, if it be not so. Does he ever descend
from a higher assimilant to a lower? Suppose him to have been born in
Italy; would he go to Holland to realize his Idea? But many a Dutchman
has sought in Italy what he could not find in his own country. We
do not by this intend any reflection on the latter,--a country so
fruitful of genius; it is only saying that the human form in Italy is
from a finer mould. Then, what directs the artist from one object to
another, and determines him which to choose, if he has not the guide
within him? And why else should all nations instinctively bow before
the superior forms of Greece?

We add but one remark. Supposing the artist to be wholly freed from
all modifying biases, such is seldom the case with those who criticize
his work,--especially those who would show their superiority by
detecting faults, and who frequently condemn the painter simply for
not expressing what he never aimed at. As to some, they are never
content if they do not find beauty, whatever the subject, though
it may neutralize the character, if not render it ridiculous. Were
Raffaelle, who seldom sought the purely beautiful, to be judged by
the want of it, he would fall below Guido. But his object was much
higher,--in the intellect and the affections; it was the human being
in his endless inflections of thought and