In the countenances of antique figures, joy bursts not into laughter; ’tis only the representation of inward pleasure. Through the face of a Bacchanal peeps only the dawn of luxury. In sorrow and anguish they resemble the sea, whose bottom is calm, whilst the surface raves. Even in the utmost pangs of nature, Niobe continues still the heroine, who disdained yielding to Latona. The ancients seem to have taken advantage of that situation of the soul, in which, struck dumb by an immensity of pains, she borders upon insensibility; to express, as it were, characters, independent of particular actions; and to avoid scenes too terrifying, too passionate, sometimes to paint the dignity of minds subduing grief. Those of the moderns, that either were ignorant of antiquity, or neglected to enquire into Grace in nature, have expressed, not only what nature feels, but likewise what she feels not. A Venus at Potzdam, by _Pigal_[329], is represented in a sentiment which forces the liquor to flow out at both sides of her mouth; seemingly gasping for breath; for she was intended to pant with lust: yet, by all that’s desperate! was this very Pigal several years entertained at Rome to study the antique. A _Carita_ of _Bernini_, on one of the papal monuments in St. Peter’s, ought, you’ll think, to look upon her children with benevolence and maternal fondness; but her face is all a contradiction to this: for the artist, instead of real graces, applied to her his nostrum, dimples, by which her fondness becomes a perfect sneer. As for the expression of modern sorrow, every one knows it, who has seen cuts, hair torn, garments rent, quite the reverse of the antique, which, like Hamlet’s, ——_hath that within, which passeth shew:_ _These, but the trappings, and the suits of woe._ The gestures of the hands of antique figures, and their attitudes in general, are those of people that think themselves alone and unobserved: and though the hands of but very few statues have escaped destruction, yet may you, from the direction of the arm, guess at the easy and natural motion of the hand. Some moderns, indeed, that have supplied statues with hands or fingers, have too often given them their own favourite attitudes—that of a Venus at her toilet, displaying to her levee the graces of a hand, ——_far lovelier when beheld._ The action of modern hands is commonly like the gesticulation of a young preacher, piping-hot from the college. Holds a figure her cloths? You would think them cobweb. Nemesis, who, on antique gems, lifts her peplum softly from her bosom, would be thought too griping for any new performance—how can you be so unpolite to think any thing may be held, without the three last fingers genteely stretched forth?