They went first to the Vatican, that palace of sculpture, where the human form shines deified by paganism, as are the virtues by Christianity. In those silent halls are assembled gods and heroes; while beauty, in eternal sleep, looks as if dreaming of herself were the sole pleasure she required. As we contemplate these admirable forms and features, the design of the Divinity, in creating man, seems revealed by the noble person he has deigned to bestow on him. The soul is elevated by hopes full of chaste enthusiasm; for beauty is a portion of the universe, which, beneath whatever guise presented, awakes religion in the heart of man. What poetry invests a face where the most sublime expression is fixed forever, where the grandest thoughts are enshrined in images so worthy of them! Sometimes an ancient sculptor completed but one statue in his life; that constituted his history. He daily added to its perfection: if he loved or was beloved; if he derived fresh ideas from art or nature, they served but to embellish the features of this idol. He translated into looks all the feelings of his soul. Grief, in the present state of society so cold and oppressive, then actually ennobled its victim; indeed, to this day the being who has not suffered can never have thought or felt. But the ancients dignified grief by heroic composure, a sense of their own strength, developed by their public freedom. The loveliest Grecian statues were mostly expressive of repose. The Laöcoon and the Niobe are among the few stamped by sorrow; but it is the vengeance of Heaven, and not human passion, that they both recall. The moral being was so well organized of old, the air circulated so freely in those manly chests, and political order so harmonized with such faculties, that those times scarce ever, like our own, produced discontented men. Subtle as were the ideas then discovered, the arts were furnished with none but those primitive affections which alone can be typified by eternal marble. Hardly can a trace of melancholy be found on their statues. A head of Apollo, in the Justinian palace, and one of the dying Alexander, indeed, betray both thoughtfulness and pain; but they belonged to the period of Grecian slavery, which banished the tranquil pride that usually pervaded both their sculpture and their poetry. Thought, unfed from without, preys on itself, digging up and analyzing its own treasures; but it has not the creative power which happiness alone can give. Even the antique sarcophagii of the Vatican teem but with martial or joyous images; the commemoration of an active life they thought the best homage they could pay the dead--nothing weakened or discouraged the living. Emulation was the reigning principle in art as in policy; there was room for all the virtues, as for all the talents. The vulgar prided in the ability to admire, and genius was worshipped even by those who could not aspire to its palm. Grecian religion was