see dragons and monsters, bulls and horses, entwined with plants and flowers, nymphs and gods, everything real and imaginary, beautiful and graceful, united into one great dissonant harmony. Skopas was the first (so far as we know) who sculptured Venus in the full beauty of her nude body. Pheidias would have considered such a treatment of the mother of mankind blasphemy. In a group of Eros, Himeros, and Pothos (Love, Longing, and Desire), we find a classification of a general feeling into three distinct subdivisions, executed with conscious discernment in order to produce a sensational effect. A raving Bacchante appears to rush away with dishevelled hair, in flowing robes; the head is thrown backwards in delirious delight; the marble lives and breathes maddening joy, but is vivified with sensual feelings, and not inspired with the elevating spirit of artistic simplicity and purity. Of this period we may study another master-piece in the British Museum; the frieze of the tomb of Mausolos at Halikarnassus. The greater part is in London and the remainder at Genoa. The subject is a battle between Greeks and Amazons. The composition is nearly as good as that on the Parthenon. There is a continuous symmetrical stream of action and reaction, as in the dashing waves of a stormy sea. _Skopas_ worked the eastern, _Bryaxis_ the northern, _Timeotheos_ the southern, and _Leochares_ the western side. Many mistakes may be found in the details, but the whole is a master-piece of manly thought;--it may be said to have been the _last manly_ product of the period. _Praxiteles_ altogether turned the scale; Aphrodite, Demeter, Persephone, Flora, Eros, Dionysius, and Apollo, are the divinities mostly sculptured by him. Everything is smooth, young, and effeminate. All harshness of line is avoided, all loftier ideas discarded. The flesh become stone is placed before us in charming and full roundness. Aphrodite was no longer draped--but with the concealing drapery the higher conception of the divinity fled. Venus, conscious of her charms, with a smile on her lips, and a coquettish movement of her hand, sinks to the level of an every-day woman. Venus had eaten of the tree of knowledge; with the consciousness of her particular womanly charms the ideal of divine universality was gone. We possess of Praxiteles, an Eros in the Vatican, and his celebrated Apollo with the lizard (Saurokthonos) in the Louvre. Both these statues are more women than men. The lines are too soft; the bodies as though without muscles or bones, composed only of flesh and fat. It is true that the older artists also softened down the too marked lines of the sexes, and in blending them together created ideal forms of beauty; but now the mere surface of the woman’s body was used for both sexes, to affect the senses exclusively. Three groups (the one probably for the pediment of a temple, the other two forming independent works of art) deserve special mention.