not, like Christianity, the solace of misery, the wealth of the poor, the future of the dying: it required glory and triumph; it formed the apotheosis of man. In this perishable creed, even beauty was a dogma; artists, called on to represent base or ferocious passions, shielded the human form from degradation by blending it with the animal, as in the satyrs and centaurs. On the contrary, when seeking to realize an unusual sublimity, they united the charms of both sexes; as in the warlike Minerva, and the Apollo Musagets; felicitous propinquity of vigor and sweetness, without which neither quality can attain perfection! Corinne delayed Oswald some time before the sleeping figures that adorn the tombs, in the manner most favorable to their art. She observed that statues representing an action suspended at its height, an impulse suddenly checked, create, sometimes, a painful astonishment; but an attitude of complete repose offers an image that thoroughly accords with the influence of southern skies. The arts there seem but the peaceful spectators of nature; and genius itself, which agitates a northern breast, there appears but one harmony the more. Oswald and Corinne entered the court in which the sculptured animals are assembled with the statue of Tiberius in the midst of them: this arrangement was made without premeditation; the creatures seemed to have ranged themselves around their master. Another such hall contains the gloomy works of the Egyptians, resembling mummies more that men. This people, as much as possible, assimilated life with death, and lent no animation to their human effigies; that province of art appeared to them inaccessible. About the porticos of this museum each step presents new wonders; vases, altars, ornaments of all kinds, surround the Apollo, the Laöcoon, and the Muses. Here may one learn to appreciate Homer and Sophocles, attaining a knowledge of antiquity that cannot be elsewhere acquired. Amid these porticos are fountains, whose incessant flow gently reminds you of past hours; it is two thousand years since the artists of these _chefs-d'œuvres_ existed. But the most melancholy sights here are the broken statues, the torso of Hercules, heads separated from their trunks; the foot of a Jupiter, which it is supposed must have belonged to the largest and most symmetrical statue ever known. One sees the battle-field whereon Time contended with Glory; these mutilated limbs attesting the tyrant's victory, and our own losses. After leaving the Vatican, Corinne led Oswald to the colossal figures on Monte Cavallo, said to be those of Castor and Pollux. Each of these heroes governs a foaming steed with one hand: this struggle of man with brute, like all the works of the ancients, finely exemplifying the physical powers of human nature, which had then a dignity it no longer possesses. Bodily exercises are generally abandoned to our common people; personal vigor, in the antique,