department of art rests pretty nearly on the same grounds as those which may be given for our study of their written models. Modern times produce excellence in every department of human industry, and our knowledge of nature, the result of continued accumulations, needs not now the limited experience of former ages. The sciences founded on demonstration, though they may trace their origin to the writings of the Greeks, have advanced to a state in which nothing would be gained by constantly recurring to the ancient condition of knowledge. But it is not so with those arts which belong to the province of design; they require a different discipline, and the faculties which they employ may have received a more complete development two thousand years ago, under favourable circumstances, than they have now. Their perfection depends on circumstances over which we have little control: they cannot, in our opinion, ever become essentially popular in any country but one where the climate favours an out-of-door life, and where they are intimately blended in the service of religion. If then a nation has existed whose physical organisation, whose climate, and whose religion all combined to develop the principles of beauty, and taught man to choose from nature those forms and combinations which give the highest and most lasting pleasure, we of the present day who do not possess these advantages must follow those who were the first true interpreters of nature. Their models possess the advantage of being fixed; for without some standard universally admitted, we should run into all the extravagances of conceit and affectation.