recent times of a quality which, in fact, emanates from the school of Pheidias, is characterized by nothing so much as this penetrative vitality. The Ideal is preserved in all its severity without any lapse in the direction of mere grace, softness, elegance, and exuberance, yet retains the form in close relation to the ideal significance which should be embodied throughout the whole. This supreme vitality is the distinguishing mark of the great artist. We may call a typical significance of this kind, in contrast to the particularity of the external world, essentially abstract. This is pre-eminently the case in sculpture and painting, arts which illuminate but a momentary state, without proceeding to such a varied development of exposition as we find, for example, in that where Homer is able to depict the character of Achilles as mild and courteous no less than severe and terrible, to say nothing of all his other characteristics. No doubt it is possible to find such a significance expressed in purely immediate reality. There are, for instance, few countenances which cannot reflect the moods of piety, devotion, and cheerfulness; but such faces also express countless other moods which either are quite inappropriate to that ideal significance, or are only indirectly related to it. For this reason it is by virtue of its particular realization that a portrait acquaints us of the fact that it is a portrait. In many old German and Flemish pictures we find the patron of the picture included in the composition with his entire family of sons and daughters. All are necessarily painted as though taken in an act of devotion, and this spirit illuminates every countenance; but at the same time we have quite as clearly set before us in the men stalwart warriors, men of vigorous action, disciplined on the strenuous field of life and commerce, and in the women dames of an equally doughty life-experience. If we compare with such faces--and we may restrict our comparison wholly to these very pictures, which are famous for their close approach to Nature in their delineation of physiognomy--those of the Virgin Mary, and the saints and apostles who surround her, we shall find in these latter one preponderating expression; and all the physical lineaments, whether we look at build of bone, structure, or muscle, traits of that express motion or repose, are concentrated upon this one artistic effect. That which is felt to be appropriate to the one class and not to the other exactly differentiates the distinction between the genuine Ideal and mere portraiture.