We have somewhere seen it observed--and have little doubt in the publicity and good sense of the thought--that there was perhaps no one thing which tended so materially to awaken lofty and good sentiments among the people--to qualify the rough outline of character--and soften and harmonize the untaught elements of their nature, as the frequent, unrestrained, and encouraged contemplation of the perfect statuary, which their master sculptors were continually erecting in their temples. This freedom was a perpetual lesson to a nation. The principle was developed, and the power of Beauty had a new, and forming, and mastering sway. A people were coming into the light of better feeling--better society--better government, under the gradual but no less certain operation of a living principle, brought into great and beautiful action, under the commanding hand of Genius, that seemed to pass at once from the sky, whose perfect things it presented to the sons of earth!--It is not singular, we think, that such a leading forth of Beauty to the contemplation of awakened man, should produce effects like those to which we have adverted. It strikes us that it would have been strange had this consequence not been generated, and noble sculpture thus have stood before a world as cold as the marble from which it was stricken. We believe that Beauty saw a renovating power in the wonder of the Venus--and it would be a sad thing to feel that it had ever ceased in its progress where woman or the chisel were doing such things to advance it. Nor has it ceased. History presents too many instances of the monarch power of Beauty in woman, to permit us to doubt upon this subject. It has passed upon the spirit of Man like a thing of necromance--winning him to its command, and bowing him to its will, until royalty itself has stood powerless in its presence, and the poor mass of mortals, stricken and panting like cornered deer before the inexorable hunter. It has been the salvation and ruin of nations, as well as families and individuals--for queens have obeyed its supremacy as well as maidens, and kings squared their mandates, and regulated their course, by the "line of beauty." All this is matter of record. Sacred and profane story abounds with instances which admit of no denial, while they excite our wonder. But the wonder ceases, notwithstanding, when we turn from record to our own experience, and _see_ the effect, on others and ourselves, of what we once _read_ about in the curious annals of our species. We now see the finished sculpture that delighted and softened the people of an age, gazed on and admired by every being whom we are accustomed to regard as rational. No one pretends to question, much less to deny the beauty of the lovely statue, in which the perfection of woman is portrayed in the finished feature or the swelling form. Insensibility here would properly be regarded as a thing to be ashamed of--as little better than a moral paralysis, which might well