Of all Taste, the standard lies in the middle between extravagance and scantiness; the best becomes a flaw, if carried to an extreme, or indiscriminately applied. The Apollo, the Hercules of Glycon, and the figure misnamed Gladiator, are each models of style in their respective classes; but their excellence would become a flaw if indiscriminately applied to the distinct demand of different subjects. Neither the Apollo, the Hercules, nor the Gladiator, can singly supply the forms of a Theseus, Meleager, or Achilles, any more than the heroes on Monte Cavallo theirs. It must however be owned, that he would commit a more venial error, and come nearer to the form we require in the Achilles of Homer, who should substitute the form of the Apollo or Hercules with the motion of the Gladiator to the real form, than he who should copy him from the best individual he could meet with: the reason is clear, there is a greater analogy between their form and action and that of Achilles, than between him and the best model we know alive. From the same principle, he who in a subject of pure history would attempt to introduce the generic and patriarchal forms in the Capella Sistina would become ludicrous by the excess of contrast; for to him the organic characteristics of national proportion are little less essential than to the draughtsman of natural history or the portrait painter. The skull of an European, though tinged with African hues, will not assimilate with the legitimate skull of a negro, nor can the foot of Meleager, or even of the Laocoon, ever be exchanged for that of a Mongul or Chinese; and he has probably mistaken his information, who fancies that the expression, gait, and limbs of the Apollo can find their counterpart on the Apalachian mountains, or are related to the unconquered tribes of Florida.