"I shall deem that I have gained some recompense for the toil of wading through so many tedious works, if it shall induce any faith in the advice I now give, namely, that 'every student of painting should himself measure many bodies of acknowledged beauty, compare them with the finest imitations in painting and sculpture, and from these measures make a canon for himself, dividing it in the manner best suited to his genius and memory. If this plan were more generally adopted, art and its productions would both be gainers.'"--It might do so, among as ingenious a people as the Greeks, in as many ages as the same method cost them to do it in! Leonardo da Vinci wanted to abridge the time, instead of beginning again! Winckelmann as little understands this great man's object, when, after saying, "As the ancients made ideal beauty their principal study, they determined its relations and proportions," he adds "from which, however, they allowed themselves to deviate, when they had a good reason, and yielded themselves to the guidance of their genius." Why, the whole purpose of the rule sought for was to regulate every possible deviation, as will now be seen. The harmonic method of the Greeks--that measure which Leonardo calls the "true proportion"--"the proportion of an individual in regard to himself"--"which should be different in all the individuals of a species," but in which "all the parts of any animal should correspond with the whole," which constitutes "the harmony of the parts of an individual," and which, as Bossi adds, "varies in every figure, according to the age, circumstances, and particular character of each"--in short, _this method for the harmony of parts in each distinct individual--this method presenting rules, perfectly precise, and yet infinitely variable_, has, in all its elements, been clearly laid before the reader (though not enunciated as a rule)--in the relative proportions of the locomotive, nutritive, and thinking systems, or, generally speaking, of the limbs, trunk, and head, and in the three species of beauty which are founded on them. These, it is evident, present to the philosophic observer, the sole means of judging of beauty by harmonic rule, the great object of Leonardo da Vinci's desires and regrets. They present the great features of the Greek method--if that method conformed to truth and nature, as it undoubtedly did. This will be rendered still clearer by a single example.