when he tells you how
you are to paint young women, and how old ones; though a Greek would
hardly have been so discourteous to age as the Italian is in his canon
of it,--"old women should be represented as passionate and hasty, after
the manner of Infernal Furies."

194. "But at least, if the Greeks do not give character, they give ideal
beauty?" So it is said, without contradiction. But will you look again
at the series of coins of the best time of Greek art, which I have just
set before you? Are any of these goddesses or nymphs very beautiful?
Certainly the Junos are not. Certainly the Demeters are not. The Siren,
and Arethusa, have well-formed and regular features; but I am quite sure
that if you look at them without prejudice, you will think neither
reach even the average standard of pretty English girls. The Venus
Urania suggests at first, the idea of a very charming person, but you
will find there is no real depth nor sweetness in the contours, looked
at closely. And remember, these are chosen examples; the best I can find
of art current in Greece at the great time; and if even I were to take
the celebrated statues, of which only two or three are extant, not one
of them excels the Venus of Melos; and she, as I have already asserted,
in _The Queen of the Air_, has nothing notable in feature except dignity
and simplicity. Of Athena I do not know one authentic type of great
beauty; but the intense ugliness which the Greeks could tolerate in
their symbolism of her will be convincingly proved to you by the coin
represented in Plate VI. You need only look at two or three vases of the
best time, to assure yourselves that beauty of feature was, in popular
art, not only unattained, but unattempted; and finally,--and this you
may accept as a conclusive proof of the Greek insensitiveness to the
most subtle beauty--there is little evidence even in their literature,
and none in their art, of their having ever perceived any beauty in
infancy, or early childhood.

[Illustration: PLATE XVI.--DEMETER OF MESSENE. HERA OF CROSSUS.]

[Illustration: PLATE XVII.--ATHENA OF THURIUM.

SEREIE LIGEIA OF TERINA]

195. The Greeks, then, do not give passion, do not give character, do
not give refined or naive beauty. But you may think that the absence of
these is intended to give dignity to the gods and nymphs; and that their
calm faces would be found, if you long observed them, instinct with some
expression of divine mystery or power.