acquainted with them, in their representation by the artist nothing short of the most exact and accurate likeness could hope for tolerance, much less for approbation. Their scientific knowledge of anatomy, as applicable and subservient to medical purposes, was perhaps inferior to ours, for they appear not to have enjoyed the advantage in their principal cities of such men as the Hunters[h] and Cleghorn:[i] but that inferiority proved not injurious to the artist, who chiefly engaged in imitating the prominent features of the human frame when thrown into action, amply compensated for his ignorance of the theory of muscular motion, of the nervous system, and of osteology, by the effects of observation incessantly repeated on the most striking objects, and, it may be, the more impressive from coming unsought and uninculcated. In fact they could scarcely avoid making this observation: it was presst on them from every quarter; it was urged on them by every incident. If they attended their morning exercises, it was excited there; if they resorted to their evening amusements, it was roused there also. In the retirement of the country it was not allowed to sleep; in the bustle of the city it was awakened to all its vivacity. From private enjoyment, from public security; from the recreations of peace, from the toils of war; from the vacuities of idleness, and from the labours of industry it alike received nurture, support, and aliment. Thus reiteratedly enforced, its effects became, like those of a second nature, interwoven with the habitudes of the mind, and called forth into action, when the occasion required, with readiness and facility, without effort and without premeditation. Hence the wonders that we are told of the astonishing power of their paintings, limited as we know they were in the number of their colours; of which though we are deprived of the sight by the lapse of time, yet are they rendered credible, nay, fully verified, to us by the matchless remains of their statues; whose transcendent merit we have ocular demonstration that neither prejudice had praised nor ignorance had extolled beyond their real deserts. Hence the truth of nature in the Laocoon, where the expression of suffering is not confined to the agitated visage, but is as forcibly marked in the agonized foot as in the distorted countenance. Hence every muscle moves, every sinew is stretched, every atom of the figure conspires to the general effect in the Borghese combatant:[k] and hence each particular part of the Farnesian Hercules represents, as forcibly as the entire statue, that character of superior manly strength and resistless might, which ancient tales have taught us to connect with the idea of the person of that fabled hero. [Footnote h: Dr. William Hunter and Mr. John Hunter, the late celebrated anatomists of London.]