end, both beyond and above the trifling present; pointing to deep and dark questions,—­to no less than where the mysteries which surround us will meet their solution.  One great mystery we see in part resolving itself here.  We see the deformities of the body sometimes giving place to its glorious tenant.  Some of us may have witnessed this, and felt the spiritual presence gaining daily upon us, till the outward shape seemed lost in its brightness, leaving no trace in the memory.

Whether the position we have endeavoured to establish be disputed or not, the absolute correspondence between the Moral and the Physical is, at any rate, the essential ground of the Plastic arts; which could not else exist, since through Form alone they have to convey, not only thought and emotion, but distinct and permanent character.  For our own part, we cannot but consider their success in this as having settled the question.

From the view here presented, what is the inference in relation to Art?  That Man, as a compound being, cannot be represented without an indication as well of Mind as of body; that, by a natural law which we cannot resist, we do continually require that they be to us as mutual exponents, the one of the other; and, finally, that, as a responsible being, and therefore a free agent, he cannot be truly represented, either to the memory or to the imagination, but as an Individual.

It would seem, also, from the indefinite varieties in men, though occasioned only by the mere difference of degrees in their common faculties and powers, that the coincidence of an equal developement of all was never intended in nature; but that some one or more of them, becoming dominant, should distinguish the individual.  It follows, therefore, if this be the case, that only through the phase of such predominance can the human being ever be contemplated.  To the Artist, then, it becomes the only safe ground; the starting-point from whence to ascend to a true Ideal,—­which is no other than a partial individual truth made whole in the mind:  and thus, instead of one Ideal, and that baseless, he may have a thousand,—­nay, as many as there are marked or apprehensible individuals.

But we must not be understood as confining Art to actual portraits.  Within such limits there could not be Art,—­certainly not Art in its highest sense; we should have in its place what would be little better than a doubtful empiricism; since the most elevated subject, in the ablest hands, would depend, of necessity, on the chance success of a search after models.  And, supposing that we bring together only the rarest forms, still those forms, simply as circumscribed portraits, and therefore insulated parts, would instantly close every avenue to the imagination; for such is the law of the imagination, that it cannot admit, or, in other words, recognize as a whole, that which remains unmodified by some imaginative power, which alone can give unity to separate and distinct objects.  Yet, as it regards man, all true Art does, and must, find its proper object in the Individual:  as without individuality there could not be character, nor without character, the human being.