The progressive change in sculpture, from a style of severe and simple majesty, to one of more studied elegance and softer character, already noticed as having commenced even in the lifetime of Phidias, received its full developement under those masters who adorned the beginning of the Macedonian empire. Various political and moral causes, without decline of talent, might have contributed to this change, which is not even so great, while it corresponds with, the contemporary revolutions which, from similar origin, took place in manners and literature, in the opinions and usages of the times. The annals of no nation, also, can boast a distinguished succession of names, eminent in the exercises of the very highest genius. Sublimity is, in its own nature, a more simple sentiment than beauty, and the sources whence it springs infinitely more limited. If, then, we find the true sublime in Grecian sculpture confined to almost the age and the labour of one man, is this to be wondered at, when the same is the case, not only in their poetry, an art far more abundant in resources, but in the poetical literature of every people? The sculptors, then, who followed the era of Pericles to the death of Alexander, can be called inferior to Phidias, only in the same sense as the poets who succeeded will be termed inferior to Homer. In both instances, the change was but the application of principles which in their essence could not vary, the subjects requiring a modification of certain distinguishing qualities.

But an opinion opposite to this is more commonly entertained, namely, that not till the improvements of Praxiteles and Lysippus, was ancient art perfectly free from the rude and harsh of that early taste. A glance, however, either to the Greek historians, or especially to the remaining labours of Phidias himself, is more than sufficient to show how utterly without foundation is this censure; and that no other man has united in his style more of the highest excellences. It is, in fact, this union which truly constitutes beauty in sculpture, whose sources of pleasing and of moving, being new, and derived only from the essential elements of design, form, and expression, admit of separation or imperfection with peculiar disadvantage. If we examine the Elgin Marbles in regard to those qualities considered as especial constituents of the beautiful, we shall find how slight indeed could be succeeding additions. More seductive grace, an air more elaborately refined, may have been given to the female statues of Praxiteles; but for that perfect beauty, which arises from including the essentials of excellence in the most liberal proportion, we search successfully in the labours of Phidias alone.

The views now taken of Grecian sculpture, in which we have divided the subject into three schools, are thus proved to be correct. Two of these have already been examined; the old school, which brought material art almost to perfection, retaining only a degree of constraint, but wanting the expression of mind; the Phidian, or sublime school, in which the genius of art soared to its loftiest height. The third is now to be considered, which, from the prevailing character of its principal works, has been rightly termed the School of the Beautiful.

The discussions which have been so warmly agitated regarding the true era of this school, seem entirely gratuitous. It is acknowledged, that the greatest masters of whom this latter age could boast, were Praxiteles and Lysippus, contemporaries, and both highly esteemed by Alexander the Great. Coeval, then, with the commencement of the career, and during the brief empire, of this prince, is to be placed the brightest period in this last display of the arts and genius of Greece. Many external circumstances concurred, with the encouragement given by Alexander himself, to render his reign propitious to refinement, science, and letters; while a reaction of opposite influences, on his death, closed with that event both the progress of higher improvement, and even the prospect of long retaining the knowledge possessed. In sculpture, particularly, a visible decay of talent, and a neglect of the exercise, soon after follow. Indeed, Pliny decidedly says, that art from thenceforth ceased,—deinde cessavit ars. This expression must be understood in a limited sense; there is no doubt, however, that the causes of decline, whose consequences wealth, the complexion and renewed energies of the times, had retarded, were then recalled into more direct activity.

Praxiteles, born about the 104th Olympiad, or 364 B. C., was a native of Magna Grecia, but of what town is uncertain. From preceding remarks it will appear, that in praising him as an original inventor,—the discoverer of a new style, writers very generally have mistaken the influence exercised by his genius upon the progress and character of sculpture. Finding the highest sublimity in the more masculine graces of the art already reached; perceiving, also, that the taste of his age tended thitherwards; he resolved to woo exclusively the milder and gentler beauties of style. In this pursuit he attained eminent success. None ever more happily succeeded in uniting softness with force,—elegance and refinement with simplicity and purity; his grace never degenerates into the affected, nor his delicacy into the artificial. He caught the delightful medium between the stern majesty which awes, and the beauty which merely seduces,—between the external allurements of form, and the colder, but loftier, charm of intellectuality. Over his compositions he has thrown an expression spiritual at once and sensual; a voluptuousness and modesty which touch the most insensible, yet startle not the most retiring.

The works which remain of this master, either in originals or in repetitions,—the Faun,—the Thespian Cupid, in the Museum of the capitol,—the Apollino with a Lizard, one of the most beautiful, as well as difficult, specimens of antiquity, abundantly justify this character. Of the works that have utterly perished, the nude and draped, or Coan and Cnidian Venus of Praxiteles, fixed each a standard which future invention dared scarcely to alter. Indeed, he appears to have been the first, perhaps the sole master, who attained the true ideal on this subject, in the perfect union of yielding feminine grace with the dignity of intellectual expression. The Venus of Cnidos, in her representative the Medicean, still 'enchants the world',

Lysippus of Sicyon the younger, contemporary and rival of the preceding, appears to have wrought only in metal. Accordingly, in comparing him with Phidias, Aristotle employs distinctive terms, which both point out this fact, and would alone settle the needless dispute, whether the latter wrought in marble. Of the 610 works, an incredible number, ascribed to Lysippus, not one survives; for the Venetian horses originally brought from Chios, by Theodosius the younger, to Constantinople, and thence removed to St Mark's in 1204, are unworthy of the artist's reputation. The bust at Portici requires also to be authenticated, though of superior merit. Born in the lowest walks of life, Lysippus was, in a great measure, self-taught, and commenced his studies where the art itself had begun,—with nature. Though a perfect master of beauty, his style appears to have been distinguished by a more masculine character than that of the age. He was emulous of reviving the grave and severe grandeur of the preceding school. This predilection his subjects and materials would cherish, if not produce. Colossal and equestrian statues of warriors in bronze, demanded a forceful and vigorous composition, with sober and dignified expression. The Tarentine Jupiter, sixty feet high, was in magnitude equal to any undertaking in the ancient world; and twentyone equestrian statues of Alexander's bodyguard, who fell at the Granicus, would alone have sufficed for the labour of years to an ordinary artist. But not only in great works was Lysippus famous; many of the most beautiful and delicate description are recorded. His finishing was exquisite, his imitation of nature faithful 'as truth itself,' and he especially excelled in the knowledge of symmetry. He was so great a favorite with Alexander, that to him alone permission of casting the prince's statue was granted; and it may serve to prove how justly this admiration of his own age was deserved, that centuries after, even the monster Tiberius trembled in his palace at an insurrection of the Roman people, occasioned by the removal from one of the public baths of a figure by Lysippus.

During at least forty years from the death of Alexander, the school founded and presided in by these two masters would preserve undiminished the beauty of the art. The latter was still alive on the death of the Macedonian prince, in the last year of the 114th Olympiad, or 324 B. C.; while Praxiteles survived to the 123d Olympiad. If, again, we consider the pupils immediately deriving their science from these great men, the period may be extended during which Greece could have produced sculptors not unworthy her ancient glory. When we contemplate also her condition in other respects, never had she exhibited a more numerous or a more imposing assemblage of intellectual worthies. Surely, then, the death of a despot could not have wrought so fatal and so immediate a decline in the means and faculties of human genius. No! but the consequences of that event destroyed an artificial system, and dried up factitious streams of prosperity, which for a time had supplied or concealed the absence of those healthful and constitutional currents, whence was circulated, throughout the whole of Greece, the very life-blood of her glory and greatness. Had liberal institutions been then restored; had the moral vigour of her better days reappeared, even amid wars and revolutions—in such struggles they had been reared—her genius and taste, her letters and arts, would have survived. These were innate in the constitution of her free states. The last, in particular, formed at once a means and an end in her popular governments. Springing up an ornamental blossom amid the sterner and the nobler fruits of liberty, they withered as independence decayed.

We would not be understood as here maintaining a respectable and amiable, but unfounded theory, that the fine arts have never flourished except under popular governments, nor that they ceased with such forms in Greece. In this, more than in any walk of genius, is the active encouragement of the supreme power indispensable to excellence. But never can the arts of taste flourish in true grandeur, where patriotism and popular feeling are not the paramount, or at least the apparently paramount, principles of the times, and source of their peculiar cultivation. The arts themselves must be essentially free; they must likewise derive their quickening inspiration from a national sentiment of interest and of country. Pisistratus and Pericles, we have seen, while rulers of Athens, were but superintendents of the arts, in their application to public purposes, in unison with public will, and in obedience to public approval. Even Phidias prepared with trembling anxiety to receive the award of merit from the voice of his fellow-citizens; and only on the supposition that they were to undergo the ordeal of a close inspection before being placed in their destined situation, can we account for the exquisite finish of the Elgin Marbles, even in parts not exposed to the effects of climate. Only when the purity of this source of honor was contaminated, did art fall, never to rise again. Not till every institution belonging to the republican ages of Greece; not till every sentiment of a generous kind had been trampled upon; not till the Olympic games ceased,—till the physical education and martial exercises of the youth were neglected,—till the arts, separated from national polity, became dependent on the caprice of individuals,—till there was no longer public spirit nor patriotic feeling; not till all that creates and endears the name of country had sunk beneath a foreign yoke or domestic thraldom, did Greece cease to produce artists.

Again, the period of this decline extends through nearly two hundred years, from the dismemberment of the Macedonian empire, to the final reduction of Greece into a Roman province. This space of time, in regard to the eras of Sculpture, has been variously and too minutely divided. Each favorable turn of circumstances enabling the art to recover a little, has been exalted into an epoch. Into these details it needs not to enter. From the death of Praxiteles, or at least in the school of his own and the pupils of Lysippus, as Cephissodotus, son of the former, Tauriscus, Eubolas, Pamphilus, Polyceutas, Agasias, and others, it does not appear that original works of magnitude or beauty were produced. After this the labours of artists seem to have been confined to copies of the works of the older masters, and chiefly to making repetitions in marble of the ancient bronzes. To this period belong many of the antique marbles now remaining. Pliny, indeed, though not with strict correctness, considers that Sculpture lay dormant during one hundred and twenty years, from the 120th to the 150th Olympiad. The AchÆan league, and the expiring efforts of Greece under the last of her heroes, Aratus and PhilopÆmen, inspired a degree of vigour into her intellectual exertions. Of these warriors, contemporary statues are noticed by Pausanius; and the latter is reported to have excelled in painting. But the Ætolian war broke for ever the ties of country, and the sacredness of national glory. Temples were therein first desecrated,—statues and paintings defaced in Greece, and by the hands of Greeks. If, during the same era, we direct our attention to the successors of Alexander in Egypt and Asia, we find letters cultivated in preference to art; or, where Sculpture is patronised, as at the courts of the Ptolemies and the SeleucidÆ, the cultivation of a taste between Grecian and barbarian only hastened the progress of corruption. One bright interval yet arose in the parent seats of refinement, upon the declaration, by the Romans, of freedom to the states of Greece. Sculpture, for more than thirty years of apparent liberty at least, and of real repose, was exercised with considerable success by the masters, Antheus, Callistratus, Polycles Apollodorus, Pasiteles, and others, possessing considerable merit, though far below the genius of ancient times. This was the struggling gleam of the expiring taper—the farewell sweet of a sun about to set forever. The independence of Greece endured only by sufferance; the AchÆan league was dissolved, and Corinth and its capitol levelled with the dust, to the sound of Roman trumpets—the knell of freedom and of the arts in Greece.