masses, as clay, wax, or gypsum. Clay was, perhaps, the earliest material employed. There are some very ancient figures of this kind, of Greek and Egyptian workmanship. The Roman ancestral images were commonly made of wax, and gypsum in stucco work is still found in ancient buildings.

Works cut in hard material, as wood, ivory and stone, constitute a second branch, to which the term sculpture is more properly applied; to which may be added, work on gems. The term statuary is properly limited to figures of living beings.

The productions of the art are sometimes slightly raised from a plane surface, and said to be in low relief: sometimes so much raised that they seem only attached to the ground, then called high relief; and sometimes they are entirely isolated.

Intaglio, or work in which the figure is lower than the surrounding surface, though less obviously embraced by the etymology of the word plastic, is included in the spirit of this department of art.

Relief and intaglio are much used on Egyptian monuments, in architectural ornaments, and on gems. Many great and beautiful works exist in relief, such as the sculptures in the frieze of the Parthenon, and the gate of the Baptistry of St. John at Florence. But the higher achievements of plastic art are to be found in the region of statuary.

Works in stone or metal have generally been first

modeled in clay, or some other soft material. The artist builds around a frame, made for the purpose, a quantity of moist clay, which he gradually models to the conception in his mind. This model is afterwards copied in the marble or the bronze in which it is to stand. The copying is a mechanical operation, and, to some extent, may be performed by an ordinary workman. It is on the model that genius displays her power. When the copy is to be made in marble, care is exercised to find a block free from every blemish, of the finest, closest texture, and purest white. In Greece the quarries of Pentelicus and Paros furnished the varieties most highly valued. In the time of Vespasian, those of Carrara, in Italy, were discovered, and continue, to this day, to supply material for the most beautiful works. The marble block is wrought to a rough likeness of the statue, with the hammer and chisel, then smoothed with rasps and files, and finished by polishing with pumice stone.

Of metals, bronze is generally preferred, being well calculated to resist the effects of atmosphere and accidental violence. A mold of plaster and brick dust is made upon the model, lined with clay, of the thickness which the bronze is designed to be, then filled with a core, composed also of plaster and brick dust, which is fixed in its place by little bars of bronze passing through the mold. The intervening clay is carefully removed, and the melted metal, poured

in through an aperture for the purpose, fills the space previously occupied by the clay. The work is afterwards polished mechanically.

Some statues are cast in gold, some in silver, and many in iron. In recent times iron castings have been carried to great perfection, especially at Berlin. The commonest material for copying statuary, and, next to marble, the most beautiful, is gypsum, though its frailty is a great objection to the use of it in exposed situations. Ivory was sometimes employed by the Greeks, even in large statues-being put as a covering upon some plainer material, as in the Minerva of the Acropolis, at Athens, and the Olympian Jupiter, both works by Phidias. The mass of the statue was of stone, and the ivory, after being polished, was neatly fastened, so as to look like one entire piece, on every part designed to be naked. The drapery was of gold, fitted on in a similar manner. These statues were also painted, and the eyes composed of precious stones. In view of this latter point, it is due to the great statuary to say that he had another end in view besides that which is truly artistic. His chief object, indeed, was to embody the Greek conception of Deity-that life of spiritual activity and sublime bodily repose. The attitude of the figure, the calm features, and motionless material, furnished the one element, and the other Phidias attempted to produce by copying the lines of thought and colors of life with the light of the eye. His success is attested by such men as Plato

and Aristotle. The means, however, whereby he effected the supernatural and awful in the mind of the Greek, to whom the idea of external immobility and internal · activity was familiar, would only shock those to whom it is foreign. We, who never conceive of the colors, and form, and light of life, without connecting therewith the motion also of life-the gentle heaving of respiration, at least-can not behold the former combined, without expecting also the latter; and where they are not to be found, the former can express nothing to us but sudden death, or suspended animation. A simple, uncolored material, whereby the counterfeit of life is not attempted, is, in the hands of genius, capable of higher effects. The plain bronze or marble can never be mistaken for the substance of living creatures, while, omitting all inferior accessories, they embody the noblest and most beautiful forms that animal life

assumes.

Of all forms, the human is the best vehicle of the sculptor's thought-because in itself the fullest of meaning to the human understanding. All its varieties, and attitudes, and features, and lines, are associated with corresponding ideas and emotions in the beholder's mind. It is itself a language most powerfully expressive and universally understood. But in order to make an adequate use of it, a thorough acquaintance with its anatomy, its balance and capacities of motion, is indispensable. This is the grammar of the sculptor's language, without which he must

forever fail in obtaining a true and effective utterance. Though apparently dealing with the superficies alone, he can not make one independent and intelligible work without a knowledge of the internal mechanism. For such is the harmony of the whole frame that any given position of one member requires a certain corresponding position of all the rest, and almost every change of attitude and action changes the shape of some of the limbs. For example, when the figure is perfectly upright, and equally supported on both feet, with the hands hanging down on each side, the line of gravity falls through the center of the body, between the ankles, to the ground. Every remove from that position alters, more or less, the direction of the line of gravity, or rather the relation of every part of the body to it. If only a step be taken forward, with a natural motion, the upper part of the body is inclined forward, and the shape as well as the attitude of the muscles employed is changed. In preparing to run, the line of gravity is thrown beyond the advanced foot; in striking, when the action begins, the body is thrown backward, the line of gravity falls out of the figure, on that side, and is immediately transferred with the falling blow to the other side-every muscle pertaining to locomotion having changed its action in that instant. To raise the arm may seem to be the act of that limb alone; but if naturally executed involves the motion of the whole body. Thus, every change of attitude demands a new modeling of the