It was my design to explain myself more particularly, concerning the negligences of the Greeks, had I been allowed time. The Greeks, as their criticism on the partridge of Protogenes, and his blotting it[110], evidently shews, were not ignorant in learned negligence. But the Zeus of Phidias was the standard of sublimity, the symbol of the omnipresent Deity; like Homer’s Eris, he stood upon the earth, and reached heaven; he was, in the style of sacred poesy, “_What encompasses him?_ &c.” And the world has been candid enough to excuse, nay, even to justify on such reasons, the disproportions in the Carton of Raphael, representing the fishing of Peter[111]. The criticism on the _Diomedes_, though solid, is not against me: his action, abstractedly considered, with his noble and expressive contour, are standards of the art; and that was all I advanced[112]. The reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks may be reduced to four heads, viz. I. The perfect Nature of the Greeks; II. The Characteristicks of their works; III. The Imitation of these; IV. Their manner of Thinking upon the Art; and Allegory. Probability was all I pretended to, with regard to the first; which cannot be fully demonstrated, notwithstanding all the assistance of history. For, these advantages of the Greeks were, perhaps, less founded on their nature, and the influences of the climate, than on their education. The happy situation of their country was, however, the basis of all; and the want of resemblance, which was observed between the Athenians and their neighbours beyond the mountains, was owing to the difference of air and nourishment[113]. The manners and persons of the new-settled inhabitants, as well as the natives of every country, have never failed of being influenced by their different natures. The ancient Gauls, and their successors the German Franks, are but one nation: the blind fury, by which the former were hurried on in their first attacks, proved as unsuccessful to them in the times of Cæsar[114], as it did to the latter in our days. They possessed certain other qualities, which are still in vogue among the modern French; and the Emperor Julian[115] tells us, that in his time there were more dancers than citizens at Paris. Whereas the Spaniards, managing their affairs cautiously, and with a certain frigidity, kept the Romans longer than any other people from conquering the country[116]. And is not this character of the old Iberians re-assumed by the West-Goths, the Mauritanians, and many other people, who over-ran their country?[117]