The assertion of Addison with respect to the first particular, regarding the higher kinds of poetry, will remain unquestionably true, till nature in some distant age, for in the present, enervated with luxury, she seems incapable of such an effort, shall produce some transcendent genius, of power to eclipse the Iliad and the Edipus. The superiority of the ancient artists in Painting, is not perhaps so clearly manifest. They were ignorant, it will be said, of light, of shade, and perspective; and they had not the use of oil colours, which are happily calculated to blend and unite without harshness and discordance, to give a boldness and relief to the figures, and to form those middle Teints which render every well-wrought piece a closer resemblance of nature. Judges of the truest taste do, however, place the merit of colouring far below that of justness of design, and force of expression. In these two highest and most important excellencies, the ancient painters were eminently skilled, if we trust the testimonies of Pliny, Quintilian, and Lucian; and to credit them we are obliged, if we would form to ourselves any idea of these artists at all; for there is not one Grecian picture remaining; and the Romans, some few of whose works have descended to this age, could never boast of a Parrhasius or Apelles, a Zeuxis, Timanthes, or Protogenes, of whose performances the two accomplished critics above mentioned, speaks in terms of rapture and admiration. The statues that have escaped the ravages of time, as the Hercules and Laocoon for instance, are still a stronger demonstration of the power of the Grecian artists in expressing the passions; for what was executed in marble, we have presumptive evidence to think, might also have been executed in colours. Carlo Marat, the last valuable painter of Italy, after copying the head of the Venus in the Medicean collection three hundred times, generously confessed, that he could not arrive at half the grace and perfection of his model. But to speak my opinion freely on a very disputable point, I must own, that if the moderns approach the ancients in any of the arts here in question, they approach them nearest in The Art of Painting, The human mind can with difficulty conceive any thing more exalted, than "The Last Judgment" of Michael Angelo, and "The Transfiguration" of Raphael. What can be more animated than Raphael's "Paul preaching at Athens?" What more tender and delicate than Mary holding the child Jesus, in his famous "Holy Family?" What more graceful than "The Aurora" of Guido? What more deeply moving than "The Massacre of the Innocents" by Le Brun?