Hence they cherished no genuine enthusiasm for its excellences, and no real respect for its professors--among them the fallen Greeks or manumitted slaves. Secondly, their national manners were inclined, while their spirit burned in its best energies, more to action and business than to elegant accomplishment. As a more particular obstacle, growing out of this general cause, the desire constantly affected of being represented in armour, most materially operated against the improvement of sculpture; and by shutting up the warm and breathing forms of nature, gave at once origin and inveteracy to the evils of harshness and incorrectness, in the early school, and in the latter, to finical and ineffective laboriousness. Thirdly, the superlative beauty of the finest labours of Greece, scattered with amazing profusion throughout Italy, rendered their possessors indifferent to contemporary and so conspicuously inferior works. To this last circumstance, however, is principally to be ascribed the only excellence to which Roman sculpture can justly lay claim, as it proved mainly instrumental in directing attention to that particular department. The busts of the Roman school, from Julius to Gallienus, embracing a period of three centuries, exhibit a series invaluable in the history of art, and in some instances capable of being compared with the best of similar works of the first ages, without suffering by the contrast. These do not, indeed, equal in heroic character one or two remains of Greece, but they exhibit a more powerful representation of individual mental resemblance. The soul of history absolutely seems to inhabit and to breathe from the marble. Into every movement of the countenance is infused an expression so speaking, so characteristic, so full of individuality, that we seem to have set before us the very actor in those deeds which have formed our most serious studies. But this high perfection applies only to the termination of the commonwealth, or does not extend beyond the reign of Augustus. As we advance, the impress of grandeur of thought, and energy of purpose, becomes obscured. This in part is no doubt owing to the decline of power to represent; but the decay of internal nobleness in the subject appears to have at least kept pace with the fall of material art; and, in the words of Pliny, when there were no longer images of mind, the lineaments of form also degenerated.