eling respecting the necessity of repose in art. Its
sources.

There is probably no necessity more imperatively felt by the artist, no
test more unfailing of the greatness of artistical treatment, than that
of the appearance of repose, and yet there is no quality whose semblance
in mere matter is more difficult to define or illustrate. Nevertheless,
I believe that our instinctive love of it, as well as the cause to which
I attribute that love, (although here also, as in the former cases, I
contend not for the interpretation, but for the fact,) will be readily
allowed by the reader. As opposed to passion, changefulness, or
laborious exertion, repose is the especial and separating characteristic
of the eternal mind and power; it is the "I am" of the Creator opposed
to the "I become" of all creatures; it is the sign alike of the supreme
knowledge which is incapable of surprise, the supreme power which is
incapable of labor, the supreme volition which is incapable of change;
it is the stillness of the beams of the eternal chambers laid upon the
variable waters of ministering creatures; and as we saw before that the
infinity which was a type of the Divine nature on the one hand, became
yet more desirable on the other from its peculiar address to our prison
hopes, and to the expectations of an unsatisfied and unaccomplished
existence, so the types of this third attribute of the Deity might seem
to have been rendered farther attractive to mortal instinct, through the
infliction upon the fallen creature of a curse necessitating a labor
once unnatural and still most painful, so that the desire of rest
planted in the heart is no sensual nor unworthy one, but a longing for
renovation and for escape from a state whose every phase is mere
preparation for another equally transitory, to one in which permanence
shall have become possible through perfection. Hence the great call of
Christ to men, that call on which St. Augustine fixed essential
expression of Christian hope, is accompanied by the promise of rest;[22]
and the death bequest of Christ to men is peace.

Sec. 2. Repose how expressed in matter.

Repose, as it is expressed in material things, is either a simple
appearance of permanence and quietness, as in the massy forms of a
mountain or rock, accompanied by the lulling effect of all mighty sight
and sound, which all feel and none define, (it would be less sacred if
more explicable,) [Greek: heudousin dioreon koruph