And now the question will naturally occur, Is all that has been done by the learned in Art, to establish certain canons of Proportion, utterly useless?  By no means.  If rightly applied, and properly considered,—­as it seems to us they must have been by the great artists of Antiquity,—­as expedient fictions, they undoubtedly deserve at least a careful examination.  And, inasmuch as they are the result of a comparison of the finest actual forms through successive ages, and as they indicate the general limits which Nature has been observed to assign to her noblest works, they are so far to be valued.  But it must not be forgotten, that, while a race, or class, may be generally marked by a certain average height and breadth, or curve and angle, still is every class and race composed of Individuals, who must needs, as such, differ from each other; and though the difference be slight, yet is it “the little more, or the little less,” which often separates the great from the mean, the wise from the foolish, in human character;—­nay, the widest chasms are sometimes made by a few lines:  so that, in every individual case, the limits in question are rather to be departed from, than strictly adhered to.

The canon of the Schools is easily mastered by every student who has only memory; yet of the hundreds who apply it, how few do so to any purpose!  Some ten or twenty, perhaps, call up life from the quarry, and flesh and blood from the canvas; the rest conjure in vain with their canon; they call up nothing but the dead measures.  Whence the difference?  The answer is obvious,—­In the different minds they each carry to their labors.

But let us trace, with the Artist, the beginning and progress of a successful work; a picture, for instance.  His method of proceeding may enable us to ascertain how far he is assisted by the science, so called, of which we are speaking.  He adjusts the height and breadth of his figures according to the canon, either by the division of heads or faces, as most convenient.  By these means, he gets the general divisions in the easiest and most expeditious way.  But could he not obtain them without such aid?  He would answer, Yes, by the eye alone; but it would be a waste of time were he so to proceed, since he would have to do, and undo, perhaps twenty times, before he could erect this simple scaffolding; whereas, by applying these rules, whose general truth is already admitted, he accomplishes his object in a few minutes.  Here we admit the use of the canon, and admire the facility with which it enables his hand, almost without the aid of a thought, thus to lay out his work.  But here ends the science; and here begins what may seem to many the work of mutilation:  a leg, an arm, a trunk, is increased, or diminished; line after line is erased, or retrenched, or extended, again and again, till not a trace remains of the original draught.  If he is asked now by what he is guided in these innumerable changes, he can only answer, By the feeling within me.  Nor can he better tell how he knows when he has hit the mark.  The same feeling responds to its truth; and he repeats his attempts until that is satisfied.