“We must do Dr Zeising the justice to say that he has not made more than a legitimate use of the materials which were presented to him in the writings of the ancients, in his endeavour to establish the fact of the existence of this law amongst them. The canon of Polycletes, the tradition of Varro mentioned by Pliny relative to that canon, the writings of Galen and others, are all brought to bear on the same point with more or less force. The sum of this portion of the argument is fairly this,—that the ancient sculptors had _some_ law of proportion—some authorised examplar to which they referred as their work proceeded. That it was the law here attributed to Plato is by no means made out; but, considering the incidental manner in which that law is referred to, and the obscurity of the passages as they exist, it is, perhaps, too much to expect more than this broad feature of coincidence—the fact that some law was known and appealed to. Dr Zeising now proceeds to examine modern theories, and it is fair to state that he appears generally to take a very just view of them. “Let us now turn to Dr Zeising’s own theory. It is this—that in every beautiful form lines are divided in extreme and mean ratio; or, that any line considered as a whole, bears to its larger part the same proportion that the larger bears to the smaller—thus, a line of 5 inches will be divided into parts which are very nearly 2 and 3 inches respectively (1·9 and 3·1 inches). This is a well-known division of a line, and has been called the GOLDEN rule, but when or why, it is not easy to ascertain. With this rule in his hand, Dr Zeising proceeds to examine all nature and art; nay, he even ventures beyond the threshold of nature to scan Deity. We will not follow him so far. Let us turn over the pages of his carefully illustrated work, and see how he applies his line. We meet first with the Apollo Belvidere—the golden line divides him happily. We cannot say the same of the division of a handsome face which occurs a little further on. Our preconceived notions have made the face terminate with the chin, and not with the centre of the throat. It is evident that, with such a rule as this, a little latitude as to the extreme point of the object to be measured, relieves its inventor from a world of perplexities. This remark is equally applicable to the _arm_ which follows, to which the rule appears to apply admirably, yet we have tried it on sundry plates of arms, both fleshy and bony, without a shadow of success. Whether the rule was made for the arm or the arm for the rule, we do not pretend to decide. But let us pass hastily on to page 284, where the Venus de Medicis and Raphael’s Eve are presented to us. They bear the application of the line right well. It might, perhaps, be objected that it is remarkable that the same rule applies so exactly to the existing position of the figures, such as the Apollo and the Venus, the one of which is upright, and the other crouching.