from the personal beauty of the people who excelled in it; the mountains and valleys of Greece furnished living examples perfect as ideal beauty, and their artists had opportunities of perfect lines, heightened by the animation of life; in the marbles which they have left, the proportions of beauty have been preserved for the schools of the moderns. Not that modern nature is less lovely, but sculptors have, more than any other artists, wandered farthest from nature, and have devoted themselves to that most unimpressive thingallegory. Whether group or figure, it should strike at once upon the heart; symmetry is of less importance than truth, and that truth should be of the simplest kind. What rerequires ingenuity, or even thought, to decipher, will never touch the heart; and the heart is that court of criticism where the true verdict of merit will always be given.

Religion or superstition was the first nurse of the arts in Europe, and of sculpture among the rest; the contemplation of a miracle or a procession, a saint or an angel, was always interesting to the simple-hearted worshipper. The next step was to those marble portraitures with which affection filled our churches :-here was nature still-but, as learning advanced, false refinement and affectation introduced a motley group of charities and geniuses, virtues and imaginary beings of all kinds, of which, if the principal part were broken up to mend the roads, neither taste nor judgment nor art would regret it. About the time of Cibber, who sculptured those two admirable mad figures for Bethlehem, our artists began to return to nature, and these statues may be regarded as among the first instances: from that period to this, allegory has never been entirely left; our monumental groups have been composed of Britannias, and Fames, and Victories, and such like conceits; yet there has been a gradual improvement, and the artists of the present day, in correct feeling and pure taste, immeasurably excel most who have preceded them.

An error into which our sculptors have fallen, also, has arisen from the fascination with which the beautiful mythology of the ancients has pervaded their minds, heightened by the association of thought, by which they have united it to ideal beauty in all its most perfect characters. The Jupiter, and Minerva, and Apollo, and Venus, with many others, have so charmed, that the admirer was led to imitate; but although to a mind highly classic there is much here to win, it is not so with the generality of observers; they regard their deities as beautiful forms only, but the spell of religion is wanting, which gave them, in the eye of the ancient Greek, so much of their power.

Another error fatal to our sculptors has been the supposition that beauty of form and grouping are the chief points, whereas they are secondary only. Truth and nature, pathos and simplicity, are the first.

If it be needed, in a Christian monument, that other than forms of earth be introduced, the attendant seraph, consoling, supporting, or waiting to receive the departing spirit, is almost the only figure which the imagination could be allowed to supply. As for the whole corps of Virtues and Sympathies, Lions and Britannias, Fames, Victories, and Heathen Deities, let them be banished from sculpture, as they have long since been from poetry.

In the monument which a grateful country raises to a departed hero, if the moment of his death could be seized with its accompanying circumstances, a few of the figures around him, and the grouping, as at the moment, would it not form the best, the most appropriate, the most pathetic composition? How should we gaze with deep interest, and realize the scene!-how would the heart be riveted, till the ear could almost hear the roar of the cannon, the shout, and the conflict!

It is a great mistake to think that modern costume cannot be managed in sculpture, and that we must have recourse to the ancients for their togue, and even for their helmets and spears and shields. The drum and the cannon, the ensign, and all the splendid appointments of modern warfare, if directed by taste, are even more poetical.

It is, however, a source of national gratulation and pride, that just thinking and feeling are making rapid progress. It has been gradually gaining ground in our island from Cibber downwards, past Roubiliac and Wilton, to Bacon, Flaxman, Westmacott, and especially Chantrey. The rising students in our school are followers of nature, and the pieces which are executed under royal or parliamentary patronage are of the same description. The sculpture of England stands high in reputation, its pieces are far dispersed, and its noble busts or statues will hereafter form a copious index to history, in which more may be read of the minds of its great spirits than all which the historian can write.

It ought not to pass without one word of notice, that at this moment the patriotism of the Hon. Anne Seymour Damer has induced her to finish a noble bronze bust of Nelson, at a great expense of money and personal labour; and she has sent it as a present to the King of Tanjore, the pupil of Schwartz, who is conspicuously distinguished as a patron of British art.

TO OCEAN.

ENDLESS, ever-sounding sea,
Image of Eternity!

Troubled, with unconscious breast,
Like the dead without their rest;
Deaf unto thy own wild roar,
Heard at once on every shore;
Stretching on from pole to pole,
Far as suns and seasons roll,
Far as reign of night and day,-
Sounding on, away-away!

Oh! what precious things there be,
Shrined and sepulchred in thee!
Gems and gold, from every eye,
Hid within thy bosom lie:
Many a treasure-laden bark
Rests within thy caverns dark;

And where towers and temples rose,
Buried continents repose:

Giant secrets of thy breast,

With their thousand isles of rest

With their brave and beauteous forms,
Undisturb'd beneath thy storms;
In a safe and peaceful home,

Where the mourner may not come,
Nor the stranger rudely tread

O'er their calm and coral bed.
Where the ocean buried lies,
May no monuments arise,
For thy bosom bears no trace
Of our evanescent race:

On thy wild and wandering wave
Bloom no laurels for the grave;
O'er thy dread, unfathom'd gloom
Tower no trophies for the tomb.
But there comes a day of dread,
To reclaim thy thousands dead;
Bursting from thy dark control,
While in fire thy billows roll,

Shall that countless multitude

Soar from out thy shrinking flood,

Thy mistress moon be changed to blood'

And the sun, with aspect drear,

Look upon this parting sphere,

As once his startled orb look'd wan

On His cross who died for man:
Then shall the archangel stand,
One foot on sea, and one on shore,
And swear with an unlifted hand
That time shall be no more!

And while Heaven's last thunders roll,
Sounding Nature's parting knoll,

Like a burning, blackening scroll,

Reeling from the face of day,

Earth and sea shall flee away!-MALCOLM.

CONVERSATION.

The first ingredient in conversation is truth; the next, good sense; the third, good humour; and the fourth, wit.-SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE.

REMARKS ON ANCIENT HISTORIANS, &c.

FROM the times of the Roman republic, no connected work on the history of that mighty state is extant anterior to the age of Titus Livius. The works of that author have been transmitted to us exceedingly mutilated and imperfect; for, of the one hundred and forty books, which it originally contained, no more than thirty-five have been preserved. The prodigies which Livy relates do not seem to impeach the soundness of his judgment, for he reported only what the ancient world believed, and what he might well leave to the evidence of the Roman people. He supports our interest through the most barren times, by making an admirable use of meagre chronicles and traditions, and by adding excellent reflections, interwoven with beautiful harangues. The genius of the republic was not yet extinct, and Rome was charmed with his work. What reader can finish, without grief, the comparatively small number of books which have survived out of the vast work which Titus Livius gave to the world! And how poignant is our regret, in remembering that the remainder was destroyed as waste paper, in France, scarcely a century and a half ago!

The history of the government of Tiberius is the great work by which Tacitus has acquired the fame of penetrating more deeply than any other historian into the soul of a tyrant. In the following books of the Annals we shall trace the corruption of the ancient character, while a few illustrious souls in the midst of the general abasement yet opposed their virtue to the omnipotence of Nero. Tacitus has unfortunately incurred the suspicion of having exaggerated the crimes and depravity of fallen princes; but what he relates is according to the “nature of the human heart," especially under the Italian climate, and other times may afford too ample a confirmation. The profound thoughtfulness of the spirit of Tacitus, the great historian, and the corresponding, though perhaps yet more peculiar, depth of his

expressions appear always the more inimitable, the more attempts are made at their imitation.

The twelve biographies of Suetonius are indisputably valuable for their correctness and impartiality. The seeming indelicacy of this historian has been frequently and justly censured: while he exposed the deformities of the Cæsars, he wrote with all the licentiousness and extravagance with which they lived.

The historians from Herodian to Carus must be used in the absence of better authors; they are not circumstantial enough to afford us a perspicuous knowledge of characters and affairs, or to fix with certainty our estimation of them.

Dio. Cassius, the Nicæan, was an experienced, indefatigable, and honest statesman. The principal resource which we derive from him is an account of the conduct of "public affairs" under Augustus, which we have not in a form so perfect and complete from any other historian; in this are contained the speeches of Maecenas and Agrippa, together with those of the emperor himself, in which Augustus, now the father of his country, appears to have become worthy of Virgil and Horace. Herodian may be said to be truly faithful, consistent, and interesting without art; a comparison of the times described by him, with that period which followed the unlamented death of Nero, and is recorded by Tacitus, leads us to observe the gradual effect of monarchical power on the senate and armies, and the influence of the long reigns of four virtuous princes.

Sallust has been deservedly admired for the elegance and surprising vigour and animation of his sentences, and the wonderful knowledge of the human heart which he every where displays; his descriptions are elegant and correct, and his harangues well suiting the character and the different pursuits of the great men in whose mouths they are placed. The principal fault of this historian is the preposterous pomp of language and the appearance of labour which is frequently visible in his writings.

Cæsar, in his literary compositions, displays the same grand and heroic character which distinguished him in action; all is directed to one great end, and every thing is better adapted to the attainment of that end than any thing which could have been substituted in its room. He possesses, in the utmost perfection, two qualities, which, next to liveliness, are the most necessary in historical compositions-clearness and simplicity. There was scarcely any branch of science, or of learning, which the comprehensive