into the mind on first beholding it. Who that saw it in what may be
called the place of its glory, the Gallery of Napoleon, ever thought
of it as a man, much less as a statue; but did not feel rather as if
the vision before him were of another world,--of one who had just
lighted on the earth, and with a step so ethereal, that the next
instant he would vault into the air? If I may be permitted to recall
the impression which it made on myself, I know not that I could better
describe it than as a sudden intellectual flash, filling the whole
mind with light,--and light in motion. It seemed to the mind what the
first sight of the sun is to the senses, as it emerges from the ocean;
when from a point of light the whole orb at once appears to bound from
the waters, and to dart its rays, as by a visible explosion, through
the profound of space. But, as the deified Sun, how completely is the
conception verified in the thoughts that follow the effulgent original
and its marble counterpart! Perennial youth, perennial brightness,
follow them both. Who can imagine the old age of the sun? As soon
may we think of an old Apollo. Now all this may be ascribed to the
imagination of the beholder. Granted,--yet will it not thus be
explained away. For that is the very faculty addressed by every work
of Genius,--whose nature is _suggestive_; and only when it
excites to or awakens congenial thoughts and emotions, filling the
imagination with corresponding images, does it attain its proper end.
The false and the commonplace can never do this.

It were easy to multiply similar examples; the bare mention of a
single name in modern art might conjure up a host,--the name of
Michael Angelo, the mighty sovereign of the Ideal, than whom no one
ever trod so near, yet so securely, the dizzy brink of the Impossible.

Of Unity, the fourth and last characteristic, we shall say but little;