well to remark, that an injudicious _word_ has often given a
wrong direction to the student, from which he has found it difficult
to recover when his maturer mind has perceived the error. It is a
common thing to hear such and such statues, or pictures, recommended
as _models_. If the advice is followed,--as it too often is
_literally_,--the consequence must be an offensive mannerism;
for, if repeating himself makes an artist a mannerist, he is still
more likely to become one if he repeat another. There is but one model
that will not lead him astray,--which is Nature: we do not mean what
is merely obvious to the senses, but whatever is so acknowledged by
the mind. So far, then, as the ancient statues are found to represent
her,--and the student's own feeling must be the judge of that,--they
are undoubtedly both true and important objects of study, as
presenting not only a wider, but a higher view of Nature, than might
else be commanded, were they buried with their authors; since, with
the finest forms of the fairest portion of the earth, we have also in
them the realized Ideas of some of the greatest minds. In like manner
may we extend our sphere of knowledge by the study of all those
productions of later ages which have stood this test. There is no
school from which something may not be learned. But chiefly to the
Italian should the student be directed, who would enlarge his views
on the present subject, and especially to the works of Raffaelle and
Michael Angelo; in whose highest efforts we have, so to speak,
certain revelations of Nature which could only have been made by her
privileged seers. And we refer to them more particularly, as to the
two great sovereigns of the two distinct empires of Truth,--the
Actual and the Imaginative; in which their claims are acknowledged
by _that_ within us, of which we know nothing but that it
_must_ respond to all things true. We refer to them, also, as
important examples in their mode of study; in which it is evident