some trait of manly resistance, calm grandeur, or inherent sweetness,
that, with all the most moving truth, the lineaments of beauty shall yet
be undefaced. The observation of Winkelmann on this subject is inimitable.
He says, that "beauty with the ancients was the tongue on the balance of
expression," and in this sense the groups of Niobe and Laocoon are master-
pieces; the one in the sublime and severe; the other in the studied and
ornamental style.

The comparison with ancient tragedy is the more apposite here, as we know
that both Aeschylus and Sophocles produced a Niobe, and that Sophocles was
also the author of a Laocoon. In the group of the Laocoon the efforts of
the body in enduring, and of the mind in resisting, are balanced in
admirable equipoise. The children calling for help, tender objects of
compassion, not of admiration, recal our eyes to the father, who seems to
be in vain uplifting his eyes to the gods. The wreathed serpents represent
to us that inevitable destiny which often involves all the parties of an
action in one common ruin. And yet the beauty of proportion, the agreeable
flow of the outline, are not lost in this violent struggle; and a
representation, the most appalling to the senses, is yet managed with
forbearance, while a mild breath of gracefulness is diffused over the
whole.

In the group of Niobe there is the same perfect mixture of terror and
pity. The upturned looks of the mother, and the mouth half open in
supplication, seem yet to accuse the invisible wrath of heaven. The
daughter, clinging in the agonies of death to the bosom of her mother, in
her childish innocence has no fear but for herself: the innate impulse of
self-preservation was never more tenderly and affectingly expressed. On
the other hand, can there be a more beautiful image of self-devoting,
heroic magnanimity than Niobe, as she bends forward to receive, if