The form of real beauty has no abrupt or broken parts. The ancients made this principle the basis of their youthful profile; which is neither linear nor whimsical, though seldom to be met with in nature: the growth, at least, of climates more indulgent than ours. It consists in the soft coalescence of the brow with the nose. This uniting line so indispensably accompanies beauty, that a person wanting it may appear handsome full-faced; but mean, nay even ugly, when taken in profile. _Bernini_, that destroyer of art, despised this line, when legislator of taste, as not finding it in common nature, his only model; and therein was followed by all his school. From this same principle it necessarily follows, that neither chin nor cheeks, deep-marked with dimples, can be consistent with true beauty. Hence the face of the Medicean Venus is to be degraded from the first rank. Her face, I dare say, was taken from some celebrated fair one, contemporary with the artist. Two other Venuses, in the garden behind the Farnese, are manifestly portraits. The form of real beauty has neither the projected parts obtuse, nor the vaulted ones sharp. The eye-bone is magnificently raised, the chin thoroughly vaulted. Thus the best ancients drew: though, when taste declined amongst them, and the arts were trampled on in modern times, these parts changed too: then the eye-bone became roundish and obtusely dull, and the chin mincingly pretty. Hence we may safely affirm, that what they call Antinous, in the Belvedere, whose eye-bone is rather obtuse, cannot be a work of the highest antiquity, any more than the Venus. As these remarks are general, they likewise concern the features of the face, the form only. There is another charm, that gives expression and life to forms, which we call Grace; and we shall give some loose reflexions on it separately, leaving it to others to give us systems. The figure of a man is as susceptible of beauty as that of a youth: but as a various one, not the various alone, is the Gordian knot, it follows, that a youthful figure, drawn at large, and in the highest possible degree of beauty, is, of all problems that can be proposed to the designer, the most difficult. Every one may convince himself of this: take the most beautiful face in modern painting, and it will go hard, but you shall know a still more beautiful one in nature.——I speak thus, after having considered the treasures of Rome and Florence.