The best guide to conduct us to this sanctuary of the beautiful, with deep
and thoughtful contemplation, is the History of Art by our immortal
Winkelmann. In the description of particular works it no doubt leaves much
to be desired; nay, it even abounds in grave errors, but no man has so
deeply penetrated into the innermost spirit of Grecian art. Winkelmann
transformed himself completely into an ancient, and seemingly lived in his
own century, unmoved by its spirit and influences.

The immediate subject of his work is the plastic arts, but it contains
also many important hints concerning other branches of Grecian
civilisation, and is very useful as a preparation for the understanding of
their poetry, and especially their dramatic poetry. As the latter was
designed for visible representation before spectators, whose eye must have
been as difficult to please on the stage as elsewhere, we have no better
means of feeling the whole dignity of their tragic exhibitions, and of
giving it a sort of theatrical animation, than to keep these forms of gods
and heroes ever present to our fancy. The assertion may appear somewhat
strange at present, but I hope in the sequel to demonstrate its justice:
it is only before the groups of Niobe or Laocoon that we first enter into
the spirit of the tragedies of Sophocles.

We are yet in want of a work in which the entire poetic, artistic,
scientific, and social culture of the Greeks should be painted as one
grand and harmonious whole, as a true work of nature, prevaded by the most
wondrous symmetry and proportion of the parts, and traced through its
connected development in the same spirit which Winkelmann has executed in
the part which he attempted. An attempt has indeed been made in a popular
work, which is in everybody's hands, I mean the _Travels of the Younger
Anacharsis_. This book is valuable for its learning, and may be very