With the reign of Hadrian, in the seventeenth year of the second century, is introduced a new style of sculpture, which may properly be termed Roman. Here the distinguishing characteristic is extreme minuteness of finish, indicating the labour more of the hand than the mind. The chisel, the file, the drill, have been plied with ceaseless care, and great mechanical dexterity. Over the whole genius and spirit of the art, is now diffused an air of studied and even affected refinement, which smooths away every characteristic and natural expression. For the sublime is substituted the difficult, the florid for the elegant; and in every remaining specimen, we can readily detect the taste which preferred a poetaster to Homer, or the laboured inanities of the sophists to the vigorous and manly eloquence of Demosthenes and Cicero. The reign of the Antonines forms the last lucid interval in the arts of the ancient world. The decline of sculpture from thence to the reign of Constantine would be almost incredibly rapid, were we not enabled to trace its progress in the monuments that yet remain. Beyond Constantine it would not be difficult, but it would be useless, to carry our inquiries. When an imperial master of the world is found pilfering, from the monument of a virtuous predecessor, a few ornaments to deck the record of his own triumphs, and which the whole ingenuity of the Roman world could not supply, the annals of ancient taste may be closed. Sculpture, it thus appears--and the remark is true of all the arts--was never cultivated in Rome as a native acquirement, as an integral element in national history. As political causes, too, the arts scarcely operated, except merely in connexion with public monuments, which were treated more as matters of business than of sentiment; where the successful execution brought no accession of moral dignity to the artist, and where the modes long formed were adopted with no change, save that arising from decaying capabilities. Of all the nations, indeed, who have held supremacy upon the earth, the Romans show the poorest claims to originality; and have least impressed the future fortunes of the human mind by any bold peculiarities or successful darings of her own genius. In letters and in the arts, they have bequeathed to posterity only modifications of the exquisite inventions of Greece. In letters, indeed, they have improved upon their borrowings, because in some instances they have imparted the stamp of nationality;--not so in the fine arts. Yet even in the former, the improvement extends only to the manner; the material remains with little alteration, and no addition. The character of Roman talent--manly and persevering, though not inventive--seemed well adapted to succeed in sculpture, laborious in its practice, in its principles grave and simple. Three causes chiefly opposed this success. The Romans regarded the art as the peculiar eminence of a conquered people.