the taste."

* * *

We soon perceived that the statues rivetted our admiration more than any
of the other works of art which the Louvre presents; and that amongst
the pictures, those made the deepest impression which approached nearest
to the character by which the Grecian statuary is distinguished. In the
prosecution of this train of thought, we were led to the following
conclusions, relative to the separate objects to which painting and
statuary should be applied.

1. That the object of Statuary should ever be the same to which it was
always confined by the ancients, viz. the representation of CHARACTER.
The very materials on which the sculptor has to operate, render his art
unfit for the expression either of emotion or passion; and the figure,
when finished, can bear none of the marks by which they are to be
distinguished. It is a figure of cold, and pale, and lifeless marble,
without the varied colour which emotion produces, or the living eye
which passion animates. The eye is the feature which is expressive of
present emotion; it is it which varies with all the changes which the
mind undergoes; it is it which marks the difference between joy and
sorrow, between love and hatred, between pleasure and pain, between life
and death. But the eye, with all the endless expressions which it bears,
is lost to the sculptor; its gaze must ever be cold and lifeless to him;
its fire is quenched in the stillness of the tomb. A statue, therefore,
can never be expressive of living emotion; it can never express those
transient feelings which mark the play of the living mind. It is an
abstraction of character which has no relation to common existence; a
shadow in which all the permanent features of the mind are expressed,
but none of the temporary passions of the mind are shewn; like the
figures of snow, which the magic of Okba formed to charm the solitude of
Leila's dwelling, it bears the character of the human form, but melts at
the warmth of human feeling. The power of the sculptor is limited to the
delineation of those signs alone by which the permanent qualities of
mind are displayed: his art, therefore, should be confined to the
representation of that permanent character of which they are expressive.

2. While such is the object to which statuary would appear to be
destined, Painting embraces a wider range, and is capable of more varied
expression: It is expressive of the living form; it paints the eye and
opens the view of