very crudeness, they supplied finish and perfection of the parts.
The ideal was still before them; the grotesque monsters might
fascinate the beholder, but, however skilfully executed, however
perfected in finish, the impression produced was but transitory,
and failed to satisfy the craving of the soul Beauty was found to
be the only abiding source of satisfaction. As the conceptions of
the past no longer satisfied the criterion which their own minds
had embraced, the Greek artists sought in nature herself for
models of that beauty, which, when placed in art forms, should be
a joy forever. The monsters of antiquity disappeared, and in their
places, came attempts to faithfully copy nature. To be sure, some
specimens of the art era from which the Greeks had just emerged
appeared at much later periods of their history; but these
creations, as in the case of the Centaur, were usually
representations of what were believed to be historical facts,
rather than fantastic creations designed by the artist to startle
the beholder. The Greek still gratified his passion for beauty of
detail, while he was pursuing his new-born purpose of copying
nature. It was not long before he found that nature, however
skilfully copied, could be perfectly mirrored to the eye of the
beholder only when presented as she appears to the mind of man.
This discovery budded and blossomed into the consummate flower of
true art, the fourth or suggestive era, which reached its acme in
the work of Phidias and his contemporaries. Every creation was the
expression of some state of mind. Everything was made as it
appeared to the eye of the poet, not as it might seem to the man
of no sentiment. The impression of the poetic mind found its
expression in art, and now the statues think, fear, hate, love.

The same general laws which have governed the rise of sculpture,