But the grossest errors on this subject have been committed by Alison, who says: "Artists, in every age, have taken pains to ascertain the most exact measurement of the human form, and of all its parts.... If the beauty of form consisted in any original proportion, the productions of the fine arts would everywhere have testified it; and, in the works of the statuary and the painter, we should have found only this sole and sacred system of proportion. The fact however is, as every one knows, that, in such productions, no such rule is observed; that there is no one proportion of parts which belongs to the most beautiful productions of these arts; that the proportions of the Apollo, for instance, are different from those of the Hercules, the Antinous, the Gladiator, &c.; and that there are not, in the whole catalogue of ancient statues, two, perhaps, of which the proportions are actually the same." Now, I believe, we may say that this original or most perfect proportion is presented in the Apollo, which is not, as generally supposed, an example of _peculiar_, but of _universal_ beauty--the locomotive system presenting as much strength as is compatible with agility, and as much agility as is compatible with strength, and any other modification of either ensuring diminution of power; while the vital and mental systems are equally perfect. Wherever this model is deviated from by the ancient artists it is _peculiar_ beauty, I believe, that is represented. He farther says: "They have imagined also various standards of this measurement; and many disputes have arisen, whether the length of the head, of the foot, or of the nose, was to be considered as this central and sacred standard. Of such questions and such disputes, it is not possible to speak with seriousness, when they occur in the present times." So also Burke says: "It must be likewise shown, that these parts stand in such a relation to each other, that the comparison between them may be easily made, and that the affection of the mind may naturally result from it." Now, no man in his senses ever cared which of these measures was adopted, except as a matter of convenience, or ever imagined that peculiar virtue resided in any of them. The following are some of the principal rules which either by intuition or with due definition, resulted from and guided the practice of the ancient Greeks. First, in regard to the THINKING SYSTEM, when the ancient artists, either from taste or from principle, gave greater opening to the facial angle than eighty degrees, they believed that an increase of intelligence corresponded to that conformation. By increasing the angle beyond eighty-five degrees, they impressed upon their figures the grandest character, as we see in the heads of the Apollo, the Venus, and others whose facial angle extends to or exceeds ninety degrees.