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viction of the errors of others, ever betrayed him into any uncandid construction of motives, or any asperity towards the conduct of his opponents. His loss was great, and would long be regretted."

Sir S. ROMILLY said, " that the long and most intimate friendship which he had enjoyed with the Honourable Member, whose loss the House had to deplore, might, he hoped, entitle him to the melancholy satisfaction of saying a few words on this distressing occasion. Though no person better knew, or more highly estimated, the private virtues of Mr Horner than himself, yet, as he was not sure that he should be able to utter what he felt on that subject, he would speak of him only as a public man.

"Of all the estimable qualities which distinguished his character, he considered as the most valuable, that independence of mind which in him was so remarkable. It was from a consciousness of that independence, and from a just sense of its importance, that, at the same time that he was storing his mind with the most various knowledge on all subjects connected with our internal economy and foreign politics, and that he was taking a conspicuous and most successful part in all the great questions which have lately been discussed in Parliament, he laboriously devoted himself to all the painful duties of his profession. Though his success at the bar was not at all adequate to his merits, he yet stedfastly persevered in his labours, and seemed to consider it as essential to his independence, that he should look forward to his profession alone for the honours and emoluments to which his extraordinary talents gave him so just a claim.

"In the course of the last twelve years the House had lost some of the most considerable men that ever had enlightened and adorned it: there was this, however, peculiar in their present loss. When those great and eminent men, to whom he alluded, were taken from them, the House knew the whole extent of the loss it had sustained, for they had arrived at the full maturity of their great powers and endowments. But no person could recollect-how, in every year since his lamented friend had first taken part in their debates, his talents had been improving, his faculties had been developed, and his

commanding eloquence had been rising
with the important subjects on which
it had been employed-how every
session he had spoken with still in-
creasing weight and authority and
effect, and had called forth new re-
sources of his enlightened and com-
prehensive mind-and not be led to
conjecture, that, notwithstanding the
great excellence which, in the last
session, he had attained, yet if he had
been longer spared, he would have
discovered powers not yet discovered
to the House, and of which perhaps
he was unconscious himself. He should
very ill express what he felt upon this
occasion, if he were to consider the
extraordinary qualities which Mr Hor-
ner possessed apart from the ends and
objects to which they were directed.
The greatest eloquence was in itself
only an object of vain and transient
admiration; it was only when enno-
bled by the uses to which it was ap-
plied, when directed to great and vir-
tuous ends, to the protection of the
oppressed, to the enfranchisement of
the enslaved, to the extension of know-
ledge, to dispelling the clouds of igno-
rance and superstition, to the advance-
ment of the best interests of the coun-
try, and to enlarging the sphere of
human happiness, that it became a
national benefit and a public blessing;
that it was because the powerful ta-
lents, of which they were now de-
prived, had been uniformly exerted in
the pursuit and promoting of such
objects, that he considered the loss
which they had to lament as one of
the greatest which, in the present state
of this country, it could possibly have
sustained."

Mr W. ELLIOT.-" Amongst his other friends, sir, I cannot refuse to my. self the melancholy consolation of paying my humble tribute of esteem and affection to the memory of a person, of whose rich, cultivated, and enlightened mind I have so often profited, and whose exquisite talents-whose ardent zeal for truth-whose just, sedate, and discriminating judgmentwhose forcible, but chastened eloquence --and, above all, whose inflexible virtue and integrity rendered him one of the most distinguished members of this House, one of the brightest ornaments of the profession to which he belonged, and held him forth as a finished model for the imitation of the rising generation.

"The full amount of such a loss, at such a conjuncture, and under all the various circumstances and considerations of the case, I dare not attempt to estimate. My Learned Friend (Sir S. Romilly) has well observed, that, if the present loss be great, the future is greater: for, by dispensations far above the reach of human scrutiny, he has been taken from us at a period when he was only in his progress towards those high stations in the state, in which, so far as human foresight could discern, his merits must have placed him, and which would have given to his country the full and ripened benefits of his rare and admirable qualities."

Mr C. GRANT " had known his lamented friend before he had distinguished himself so much as he had subsequently done, and could not be silent when such an opportunity occurred of paying a tribute to his memory. Whatever difference of opinion they might have on public questions, he could suspend that difference to admire his talents, his worth, and his virtues. It was not his talents alone that were developed in his eloquence. His eloquence displayed his heart: through it were seen his high-minded probity, his philanthropy, his benevolence, and all those qualities which not only exacted applause, but excited love. It was the mind that appeared in speeches that gave them character. He would not enter into the account of his private life, although his private virtues were at least on a level with his public merits. Amid all the cares and interests of public life, he never lost his relish for domestic society, or his attachment to his family. The last time that he (Mr G.) conversed with him, he was anticipating with pleasure the arrival of a season of leisure, when he could spend a short time in the bosom of his family, and amid the endearments of his friends. When he looked at his public or private conduct, his virtues, or his talents, he would be allowed to have earned applause to which few other men ever entitled themselves."

Lord LASCELLES "hoped to be excused for adding a few words to what had been said, though he had not the honour of a private acquaintance with Mr Horner, whom he knew only in this House, where they had almost uniformly voted on opposite sides on

every great question. Notwithstanding these differences, he had often said in private, that Mr Horner was one of the greatest ornaments of his country; and he would now say in public, that the country could not have suffered a greater loss. The forms of Parliament allowed no means of expressing the collective opinion of the House on the honour due to his memory; but it must be consolatory to his friends to see, that if it had been possible to have come to such a vote, it would certainly have been unanimous.”

The subject of this well-merited praise, and of all these sincere but ineffectual regrets, was born at Edinburgh, on the 12th of August 1778. In the month of October, 1786, he entered the high school of that city; and having remained at this seminary for six years, during the four first of which he was the pupil of Mr Nicol, and the two last of the celebrated Dr Adam, he passed on to the university in October 1792. In November 1795, he was placed under the care of the Rev. Mr Hewlett in London, with whom he lived, and who superintended his education for a period of two years. He then returned to Edinburgh, and applied himself to the study of the law, and passed advocate in the year 1800. Soon after, he took up his residence in London, with the view of preparing himself for the English bar. In 1806, he was appointed by the East India Company one of the commissioners for the liquidation of the debts of the Nabob of Arcot; but resigned this laborious situation in little more than two years, finding that the duties which it imposed on him were incompatible with the application due to his professional pursuits. In October 1806, he was returned Member of Parliament for St Ives. The following year, he was elected Member for Wendover, and was called to the English bar. In 1813, he was chosen to represent the borough of St Mawes in the present parliament.

The disease which proved fatal to Mr Horner was an induration_and contraction of the lungs; a malady, the existence of which is not marked by any decided symptom, and which is wholly beyond the reach of medical aid. He died at Pisa on the 8th of February 1817, aged thirty-eight years and six months, and was interred in the Protestant burying-ground at Leghorn.

ON THE SCULPTURE OF THE GREEKS.

-Γενοίμαν

ἵν ̓ ὑλαεν ἐπεςι ποντε

Προβλημα ἁλικλυςον, ἄκραν

Υπο πλακα Σ8118

Τας ἱερας όπως προσειποιμ ̓ ὧν ̓Αθανας.

Sophoclis Ajax, v. 1217.

FOR the last two thousand years, a few blocks of marble, cut in resemblance of the human body, have formed the almost solitary subject of uniform opinion among all men, and excited, without qualification, the universal admiration of the world. The Romans took them from the Greeks, and were not ashamed to confess them selves overcome by the artists of a nation which they had subdued. In the midst of wars and of triumphs, the nations of Modern Europe treat these marbles as they do cities and provinces -gain possession of them by victories, and cede them by treaties. The ancients who have written concerning them, speak of them, like ourselves, in hyperbolical expressions of enthusiasm; and by the general consent of Greeks, Romans, and Barbarians, these aster-pieces of art have been raised to the rank of so many unfailing standards, by a comparison with which alone the excellencies of the productions of nature herself can be duly appreciated and admired. It is yet more wonderful, that though these admirable figures have for some centuries been made the subject of unceasing imitation, they maintain to this hour an undisputed superiority over all the productions of the moderns. We are never weary of asking, by what art they have been produced?-and this problem has never yet been entirely solved. In order to answer it in a satisfactory manner, it is not enough to shew wherein consists the perfection of the ancient statues, and by what rules of execution they have been rendered so perfect as they are; it is necessary to go deeper into the subject, and to examine what may have been the causes of this perfection; that is to say, by what train of actions and opinions the Greeks arrived at the formation and realization of those principles by which it has been produced. To do this well, we must forget our own habits and manners; we must transport ourselves into Greece herself into the country of a people VOL. I.

in every thing which respects the fine arts very different from ourselves; and we must endeavour to determine the nature and the causes of their taste, without allowing ourselves to be seduced by the depravity of our own.

The character of the individual was every thing among the Greeks. They cultivated his moral part, and they perfected his physical part, because his physical and his moral qualities were alike necessary for the purposes of the state. The case is very different among modern nations. What signifies the beauty, or even the virtue of an individual, to the overgrown empires of the west? Removed, as we are, to an inconceivable distance from the Greeks in our appreciation of the model, it is no great wonder that we should have little in common with them on the principles of the imitation. Much difficulty might have been spared us, had the numerous writings of the Greek artists descended to our hands; these, however, have all perished in the lapse of centuries; and a few scattered notices, gathered from the allusions of their poets and philosophers, are all that we have in their room. Among the moderns, on the other hand, systems concerning the theory, as well as the practice, of the arts,-on the essence of the beautiful, on the ideal, and on the principles of imitation,-have been so multiplied, that which ever side we take in any of these very difficult questions, we are sure to meet with abundance of celebrated writers with whom we must contend, and jealous opinions which we must either confute or reconcile.

Those authors who, in treating of the history of the arts, have recognized the superiority of the Greeks over their modern imitators, have generally attributed this superiority to the influences of climate, of religion, of political liberty, of the facility with which the naked figure was studied, and the recompenses with which their artists were distinguished. They have thought that the genius, the physical beauty, and a certain charm of character, which they regard as having been peculiar to the Greeks, were the product of the temperature of their climate. They have said, that the veneration of the Greeks for the statues of their gods, and the majestic ideas of religion, had elevated the imagination of artists above the sphere of

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sense; that the entire liberty which the Greeks enjoyed (that constant source of all their revolutions and all their jealousies) had spread abroad among them the seeds of noble and sublime sentiments; that the habit of seeing the naked figure, a habit derived not only from the nature of their public games, but even from the character of their ordinary costume, was of itself sufficient to lead many to the imitation of the human body; and that, in fine, the honours with which the artists were signalized, and, above all the rest, the noble use which was made of their works, by consecrating them as the recompense of illustrious actions, must have furnished to the enthusiasm of their youth, at once opportunity and impatience for distinction.

It is impossible to doubt that all these different causes have contributed to the perfection of the artists. These theories are, in many respects, full of justice and truth, but they involve, at the same time, many errors, and it is no difficult matter to detect the insufficiency of the systems which they would propose.

The history of the arts, in truth, whether we compare Greeks with Greeks, or Greeks with other nations, presents many phenomena which can only be explained by a great multiplicity of researches. In this study, as in that of the natural sciences, we must be not unfrequently content to make almost as many definitions as there are individuals.

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1. The Greeks had received from the hand of nature a climate full of contrasts a sky sometimes of the purest azure, sometimes surcharged with the most dark and the most tempestuclouds-destructive winds-the extremities of heat and cold-delightful vallies, full of fertility and cultivation-and naked mountains, trod only by a few wandering goat-herds—caverns full of deep mephitic vapours freezing springs and boiling fountains, all peopled with supernatural inhabitants, by the superstitious fancy of the heroic times. The natural effects of these circumstances were an extremely delicate and irritable organization a spirit active and curious, but capable of every excess-a character changeable, turbulent, and passionate, alike disposed to love, to vanity, and to superstition.

But, first of all, it must strike us as

an astonishing circumstance, that within a territory by no means extensive, and under the influence of a climate almost every where the same, the different states of Greece by no means cultivated the arts with the same zeal or the same success. Despised in Crete, and proscribed at Sparta, they were never thought of in Arcadia, Achaia, Ætolia, Phocis, or Thessaly. In Boeotia (in the native country of Hesiod, Pindar, and Corinna) they were proverbially disregarded and contemned. In Corinth, they remained stationary in the second rank;—but attained, alike, the full consummation of their glory in Sicyon and in Athens. It must moreover be evident, that the brilliant qualities which the Greeks derived from the influence of their climate, might have been as likely to lead them astray as to conduct them aright. The poetical genius which was habitual to them, was very far from resembling in every thing that which is the inspiration of painting and of sculpture. These Athenians, in every thing else so light, so imprudent, so irascible, who alternately crowned and exiled their great men-who slumbered during peace, and formed vast projects of empire in the midst of irreparable defeats,-shewed, in their taste relative to the fine arts, a wisdom and a coolness which may be said to form the exact reverse of their natural disposition. Faithfully attached to the same principles, they avoided, during a long course of ages, all error and all novelty. Somewhere else, then, than in the mere heat and effervescence of the Athenian blood, must we seek for the causes of this firmness, and of the perfection to which it conducted.

2. Although there may be some ground for believing that the forms of the human body were in general more beautiful among the ancient Greeks than they were among the greater part of modern nations, the difference between them and us, in this respect, could never have been so considerable as to have had any great influence on the arts. The countries in which these arts had made the greatest progress, were by no means those which abounded in the most beautiful models. "Quotus enim quisque formosus est ?" says Cicero: "Athenis cum essem, e grege epheborum vix singuli reperiebantur." Phryne was of Thebes, Glycera of Thespis, Aspasio of

Miletus; and as we, to praise our fine women, call them Grecian beauties, the European Greeks were accustomed to call their mistresses Ionian beauties, naλas To Iwvixov. Besides, the difficulty would be by no means resolved by this difference of form, even were it granted in its fullest extent; for I imagine there are few who will deny, that the difference between our most handsome men and the most handsome Athenian, is much less consider able than the difference between our most beautiful statues and the master pieces of the Greeks. Moreover, the Greeks had no models in nature for their architectural monuments: nevertheless, the same character,-the evident product of the very same principles,―is displayed in their temples as in their statues; and, equally as in them, it is to be seen in their vases,in their furniture-and in the most common of their utensils.

3. The same remarks may, with a very little variation, be applied to their religion, and to the facility of seeing the naked figure. It was the virgins of Sparta who were so much celebrated for displaying their charms in the public festivals, and yet the Spartans were no lovers of the arts. Shut up within the impenetrable walls of their apartments, the women of the other Grecian states did not appear even at the Olympic games, and courtezans were the only models of the artists. Our artists, on the other hand, who see every day, without restraint, heads and hands of the most exquisite elegance, well worthy of the finest days of Miletus or of Sparta, produce neither heads nor hands which can bear the most remote comparison with the antique. As for the spirit of religion, I confess I am greatly inclined to banish it altogether from the number of those influences which were favour able to the arts of Greece. Easily excited, and disposed for unquestioning admiration, it is little fitted for the exercise of a severe judgment; it becomes every day more and more attached to its ancient idols, and adores in them less that which it sees in reality than what it believes is to be seen. The devout Greek, who bowed himself at Olympus before the Jupiter of Phidias, revered at Argos, at Thespis, and even in the bosom of Athens, fiures of J uno, of Venus, of the Graces, and of Love, which were nothing more

than rude masses of stone, or ill-fashioned pieces of timber. He adored, at Mount Elaius, a horse-headed Ceres; at Phygalia, an Eurynome, who was half woman and half fish, like the idol of the barbarians of Gath; and at the temple of Ephesus itself, which was one of the seven wonders of the world, a gigantic or hieroglyphical monster, with nine or ten tiers of breasts. Civil usages and manners, and the general taste, had happily more effect on the religion of Greece than that religion had upon them. But for the revolution which national genius, taste, and the arts themselves, operated in the creed of the Greeks, that people, so celebrated for the beauty of their gods, would have remained prostrate before the monsters of the Nile, under the despotism of their priests. The religion of the Greeks, moreover, is far from being the only one which has attributed to deities the

forms of men. If this religion, by the poetical mystery which it involved, favoured the perfection of the arts, and lifted the imagination of the artists above the sphere of the senses, why is it that the Christian religion produces no similar effects? Did the poetry or the religion of the Greeks contain any thing more lofty and more imposing than the imagery of the Scriptures? The beauty of Angels is all that imagination can represent as most admirable and most divine. Martyrs, Prophets, and Apostles, are at least equal in dignity with Philosophers, Fauns, and Pentathlete. The dying resignation of the holy Stephen is surely as good a subject as the expiring shudder of a hireling gladiator. Moses found lying among the bulrushes by the daughter of Pharoah, is as picturesque an incident as the discovery of Edipus by the shepherds of Cithæron. Samson was as strong as Milo; and many beauties are recorded in the Bible, who were at least as worthy of the chisel of a Phidias, as the Laises and the Elpinices of an Athenian brothel.

4. With regard to political liberty, we see in Greece, as every where else, free people, who have rejected the arts; and others, ruled by despots, who have cultivated them with the greatest success. Did the arts languish at Sicyon, under Aristatus and the Cypselides; at Athens, under Hippias; at Samos, under Polycrates; at Syra

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