In presuming to differ on the propriety of this mode of expression in the picture of Timanthes from the respectable authority I have quoted, I am far from a wish to invalidate the equally pertinent and acute remarks made on the danger of its imitation; though I am decidedly of opinion that it is strictly within the limits of our art. If it be a “trick,” it is certainly one that has served more than once. We find it adopted to express the grief of a beautiful female figure on a basso-relievo formerly in the palace Valle at Rome, and preserved in the Admiranda of St. Bartoli; it is used, though with his own originality, by Michael Angelo in the figures of Abijam, to mark unutterable woe; Raffaelle, to show that he thought it the best possible mode of expressing remorse and the deepest sense of repentance, borrowed it in the expulsion from Paradise, without any alteration, from Masaccio; and, like him, turned Adam out with both his hands before his face. And how has he represented Moses at the burning bush, to express the astonished awe of human in the visible presence of Divine nature? by a double repetition of the same expedient; once in the ceiling of a stanza, and again in the loggia of the Vatican, with both his hands before his face, or rather with his face immersed in his hands. As we cannot suspect in the master of expression the unworthy motive of making use of this mode merely to avoid a difficulty, or to denote the insupportable splendour of the vision, which was so far from being the case, that, according to the sacred record, Moses stepped out of his way to examine the ineffectual blaze; we must conclude that Nature herself dictated to him this method as superior to all he could express by features; and that he recognised the same dictate in Masaccio, who can no more be supposed to have been acquainted with the precedent of Timanthes, than Shakspeare with that of Euripides, when he made Macduff draw his hat over his face. ESSAY IV. OF THE THIRD PERIOD OF PAINTING IN GREECE. The Poets bring the Gods upon the stage, and all that is pompous, grave, and delightful. The Painters likewise do design as many things upon a board as the Poets possibly can utter. PHILOSTRATUS, _Preface to the Picture Gallery_. In the fantasies of Painters nothing is so commendable as that there be both possibility and truth. LONGINUS. Among the nations bordering upon European Greece, Macedonia was most like it in manners, language, and physical circumstances; yet the Macedonians were generally looked upon as barbarians by those proud Republicans, who claimed the exclusive name of Greeks.