our sympathies; and we turn from it coldly, as from the work of an
artificer, not of an Artist. But not so can we turn from the intense
life, that seems almost to breathe upon us from the celestial group of
the Virgin and her Child, and from the Angels below: in these we have
the evidence of the divine afflatus,--of inspired Art.

In the works of Michael Angelo it were easy to point out numerous
examples of a similar failure, though from a different cause; not from
mechanically following the Antique, but rather from erecting into
a model the exaggerated _shadow_ of his own practice; from
repeating lines and masses that might have impressed us with grandeur
but for the utter absence of the informing soul. And that such is the
character--or rather want of character--of many of the figures in his
Last Judgment cannot be gainsaid by his warmest admirers,--among whom
there is no one more sincere than the present writer. But the failures
of great men are our most profitable lessons,--provided only, that we
have hearts and heads to respond to their success.

In conclusion. We have now arrived at what appears to us the
turning-point, that, by a natural reflux, must carry us back to our
original Position; in other words, it seems to us clear, that the
result of the argument is that which was anticipated in our main
Proposition; namely, that no given number of Standard Forms can with
certainty apply to the Human Being; that all Rules therefore, thence
derived, can only be considered as _Expedient Fictions_, and
consequently subject to be _overruled_ by the Artist,--in whose
mind alone is the ultimate Rule; and, finally, that without an
intimate acquaintance with Nature, in all its varieties of the moral,
intellectual, and physical, the highest powers are wanting in their
necessary condition of action, and are therefore incapable of