sense; that the entire liberty which the Greeks enjoyed (that constant source of all their revolutions and all their jealousies) had spread abroad among them the seeds of noble and sublime sentiments; that the habit of seeing the naked figure, a habit derived not only from the nature of their public games, but even from the character of their ordinary costume, was of itself sufficient to lead many to the imitation of the human body; and that, in fine, the honours with which the artists were signalized, and, above all the rest, the noble use which was made of their works, by consecrating them as the recompense of illustrious actions, must have furnished to the enthusiasm of their youth, at once opportunity and impatience for distinction.
It is impossible to doubt that all these different causes have contributed to the perfection of the artists. These theories are, in many respects, full of justice and truth, but they involve, at the same time, many errors, and it is no difficult matter to detect the insufficiency of the systems which they would propose.
The history of the arts, in truth, whether we compare Greeks with Greeks, or Greeks with other nations, presents many phenomena which can only be explained by a great multiplicity of researches. In this study, as in that of the natural sciences, we must be not unfrequently content to make almost as many definitions as there are individuals.
1. The Greeks had received from the hand of nature a climate full of contrasts—a sky sometimes of the purest azure, sometimes surcharged with the most dark and the most tempestuous clouds—destructive winds—the extremities of heat and cold—delightful vallies, full of fertility and cultivation—and naked mountains, trod only by a few wandering goat-herds—caverns full of deep mephitic vapours—freezing springs and boiling fountains, all peopled with supernatural inhabitants, by the superstitious fancy of the heroic times. The natural effects of these circumstances were an extremely delicate and irritable organization—a spirit active and curious, but capable of every excess—a character changeable, turbulent, and passionate, alike disposed, to love, to vanity, and to superstition.
But, first of all, it must strike us as an astonishing circumstance, that within a territory by no means extensive, and under the influence of a climate almost every where the same, the different states of Greece by no means cultivated the arts with the same zeal or the same success. Despised in Crete, and proscribed at Sparta, they were never thought of in Arcadia, Achaia, Ætolia, Phocis, or Thessaly. In Bœotia (in the native country of Hesiod, Pindar, and Corinna) they were proverbially disregarded and contemned. In Corinth, they remained stationary in the second rank;—but attained, alike, the full consummation of their glory in Sicyon and in Athens. It must moreover be evident, that the brilliant qualities which the Greeks derived from the influence of their climate, might have been as likely to lead them astray as to conduct them aright. The poetical genius which was habitual to them, was very far from resembling in every thing that which is the inspiration of painting and of sculpture. These Athenians, in every thing else so light, so imprudent, so irascible, who alternately crowned and exiled their great men—who slumbered during peace, and formed vast projects of empire in the midst of irreparable defeats,—shewed, in their taste relative to the fine arts, a wisdom and a coolness which may be said to form the exact reverse of their natural disposition. Faithfully attached to the same principles, they avoided, during a long course of ages, all error and all novelty. Somewhere else, then, than in the mere heat and effervescence of the Athenian blood, must we seek for the causes of this firmness, and of the perfection to which it conducted.
2. Although there may be some ground for believing that the forms of the human body were in general more beautiful among the ancient Greeks than they were among the greater part of modern nations, the difference between them and us, in this respect, could never have been so considerable as to have had any great influence on the arts. The countries in which these arts had made the greatest progress, were by no means those which abounded in the most beautiful models. "Quotus enim quisque formosus est?" says Cicero: "Athanis cum essem, e grege epheborum vix singuli reperiebantur." Phryne was of Thebes, Glycera of Thespis, Aspasio of
