We shall even go farther, and confess that we have derived great pleasure from Mannerists, when the manner has not been carried too far, and that we are pleased with the possession of their works. The artists who have received this name have been gifted with uncommon talent, but became early aware that, in the state of the times as well as of the schools into which they were cast by fate, there was no room for minute labor, but that they must choose their part, and perfect themselves speedily. They therefore made themselves a language, into which they could, without farther trouble, translate with ease and dexterity all visible subjects, and exhibit to us representations of all sorts of scenes with greater or less success. Thus whole nations have been entertained and hoodwinked for long periods of time, until at last one or another artist has found the way back to nature and a higher feeling of art. We may perceive, by the Herculanean antiquities, how the ancients also fell into this kind of manner; only their models were too great, too present, fresh, and well preserved, for their second and third rate artists to be able to lose themselves entirely in insignificance. Let us now assume a higher and more agreeable point of view, and consider the talent with which Raphael was so singularly gifted. Born with the happiest natural gifts, at a time when art combined the most conscientious labor, attention, industry, and truth, the young man was already led by excellent masters to the threshold, and had only to raise his foot to enter the temple. Disciplined by Perugino in the most careful elaboration, his genius was developed by Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Neither of these artists, in spite of their long life and the cultivation of their powers, seems ever to have reached the true enjoyment of artistic production. The former, if we look closely, wearied himself with thought, and dissipated his powers in mechanical inquiries; and we have to blame the latter for spending his fairest years among stone quarries, getting out marble blocks and slabs, so that, instead of carrying out his intention of carving all the heroes of the Old and New Testament, he has left only his Moses as an example of what he could and should have done. Raphael, however, during his whole life, ever increased in the even facility of his work. We see in him the development of the intellectual and active powers, which preserve such remarkable balance that it may be affirmed that no modern artist has possessed such purity and completeness of thought and such clearness of expression. In him we have another instance of a talent that pours out to us the freshest water from the purest source. He never affects a Greek manner, but feels, thinks, works like a Greek. We see the fairest talent developed in the most favorable hours. The same thing occurred, under like conditions and circumstances, in the time of Pericles.