inferior variant represents in certain parts the feeling of the original far better than another and generally finer example may happen to do. Nay, such splendid works as the so-called Venus of Milo itself must thus be regarded rather as fortunate copies or modifications of an accepted type by some gifted originator than as necessarily originals by the best masters. With the exception of the few fragments from the Parthenon by Pheidias and his pupils, hardly anything in this gallery can be set down with certainty to any first-class name of the very best periods. But many statues can be assigned to groups which took their origin from certain particular famous sculptors: we know the _school_, though not the _artist_. And several are judged by the descriptions of ancient writers to be copies or variants of works assigned to sculptors of the first eminence. Many of the statues found in the Renaissance period, and up to the close of the eighteenth century, have been freely and often injudiciously restored: others have really antique heads, which do not however in every case belong to them. Not a few have been considerably altered and hacked about in the course of restoration, or of arbitrarily supplying them with independent faces. This reprehensible practice has _not_ been followed in more recent additions such as the “Venus of Milo” and the Samothracian Nikè.] * * * * *