[Footnote 25: It is said that Mengs, who was desirous of being considered a philosophical painter, coincided with Vitruvius in opinion. But this opinion should be restricted to some indifferent specimens; for when he afterwards saw them painted in the true style of the ancients, he regarded them with extraordinary pleasure; as in Genoa, which possesses some beautiful arabesques by Vaga. So the defender of Ratti assures us.] ROMAN SCHOOL. EPOCH II. _Raffaello and his School._ We are now arrived at the most brilliant period, not only of the Roman School, but of modern painting itself. We have seen the art carried to a high degree of perfection by Da Vinci and Bonarruoti, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and it is a remarkable fact that the same period embraces not only Raphael, but also Coreggio, Giorgione, and Titian, and the most celebrated Venetian painters: so that a man enjoying the common term of life might have seen the works of all these illustrious masters. The art in but a few years thus reached a height to which it had never before attained, and which has never been rivalled, except in the attempt to imitate these early masters, or to unite in one style their varied and divided excellences. It seems indeed an ordinary law of providence, that individuals of consummate genius should be born and flourish at the same period, or at least at short intervals from each other, a circumstance of which Velleius Paterculus, after a diligent investigation, protested he could never discover the real cause. I observe, he says, men of the same commanding genius making their appearance together, in the smallest possible space of time; as it happens in the case of animals of different kinds, which, confined in a close place, nevertheless each selects its own class, and those of a kindred race separate themselves from the rest, and unite in the closest manner. A single age was sufficient to illustrate Tragedy, in the persons of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides: ancient comedy under Cratinus, Aristophanes, and Eumolpides; and in like manner the new comedy under Menander, Diphilus, and Philemon. There appeared few philosophers of note after the days of Plato and Aristotle, and whoever has made himself acquainted with Isocrates and his school, is acquainted with the summit of Grecian eloquence. The same remark applies also to other countries. The great Roman writers are included under the single age of Octavius: Leo X. was the Augustus of modern Italy; the reign of Louis XIV. was the brilliant era of French letters, that of Charles II. of the English.