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Lectures on Art by Washington Allston
page 101 of 189 (53%)
reasonable, then, to suppose that any thing not immutable in its
nature could possibly have withstood such continual fluctuation?
But how have all these changes affected this _visible image of
Truth_? In no wise; not a jot; and because what is _true_ is
independent of opinion: it is the same to us now as it was to the men
of the dust of antiquity. The unlearned spectator of the present day
may not, indeed, see in it the Demigod of Greece; but he can never
mistake it for a mere exaggeration of the human form; though of mortal
mould, he cannot doubt its possession of more than mortal powers; he
feels its _essential life_, for he feels before it as in the
stirring presence of a superior being.

Perhaps the attempt to give form and substance to a pure Idea was
never so perfectly accomplished as in this wonderful figure. Who has
ever seen the ocean in repose, in its awful sleep, that smooths it
like glass, yet cannot level its unfathomed swell? So seems to us the
repose of this tremendous personification of strength: the laboring
eye heaves on its slumbering sea of muscles, and trembles like a skiff
as it passes over them: but the silent intimations of the spirit
beneath at length become audible; the startled imagination hears it
in its rage, sees it in motion, and sees its resistless might in
the passive wrecks that follow the uproar. And this from a piece of
marble, cold, immovable, lifeless! Surely there is that in man, which
the senses cannot reach, nor the plumb of the understanding sound.

Let us turn now to the Apollo called Belvedere. In this supernal
being, the human form seems to have been assumed as if to make visible
the harmonious confluence of the pure ideas of grace, fleetness, and
majesty; nor do we think it too fanciful to add celestial splendor;
for such, in effect, are the thoughts which crowd, or rather rush,
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