by the learned in Art, to establish certain canons of Proportion,
utterly useless? By no means. If rightly applied, and properly
considered,--as it seems to us they must have been by the great
artists of Antiquity,--as _expedient fictions_, they undoubtedly
deserve at least a careful examination. And, inasmuch as they are the
result of a comparison of the finest actual forms through successive
ages, and as they indicate the general limits which Nature has been
observed to assign to her noblest works, they are so far to be valued.
But it must not be forgotten, that, while a race, or class, may be
generally marked by a certain average height and breadth, or curve and
angle, still is every class and race composed of _Individuals_,
who must needs, as such, differ from each other; and though the
difference be slight, yet is it "the little more, or the little less,"
which often separates the great from the mean, the wise from the
foolish, in human character;--nay, the widest chasms are sometimes
made by a few lines: so that, in every individual case, the limits in
question are rather to be departed from, than strictly adhered to.

The canon of the Schools is easily mastered by every student who has
only memory; yet of the hundreds who apply it, how few do so to any
purpose! Some ten or twenty, perhaps, call up life from the quarry,
and flesh and blood from the canvas; the rest conjure in vain with
their canon; they call up nothing but the dead measures. Whence the
difference? The answer is obvious,--In the different minds they each
carry to their labors.

But let us trace, with the Artist, the beginning and progress of a
successful work; a picture, for instance. His method of proceeding may
enable us to ascertain how far he is assisted by the science, so called,
of which we are speaking. He adjusts the height and breadth of his figures