of nature.  Judges of the truest taste do, however, place the merit of colouring far below that of justness of design, and force of expression.  In these two highest and most important excellencies, the ancient painters were eminently skilled, if we trust the testimonies of Pliny, Quintilian, and Lucian; and to credit them we are obliged, if we would form to ourselves any idea of these artists at all; for there is not one Grecian picture remaining; and the Romans, some few of whose works have descended to this age, could never boast of a Parrhasius or Apelles, a Zeuxis, Timanthes, or Protogenes, of whose performances the two accomplished critics above mentioned, speaks in terms of rapture and admiration.  The statues that have escaped the ravages of time, as the Hercules and Laocoon for instance, are still a stronger demonstration of the power of the Grecian artists in expressing the passions; for what was executed in marble, we have presumptive evidence to think, might also have been executed in colours.  Carlo Marat, the last valuable painter of Italy, after copying the head of the Venus in the Medicean collection three hundred times, generously confessed, that he could not arrive at half the grace and perfection of his model.  But to speak my opinion freely on a very disputable point, I must own, that if the moderns approach the ancients in any of the arts here in question, they approach them nearest in The Art of Painting, The human mind can with difficulty conceive any thing more exalted, than “The Last Judgment” of Michael Angelo, and “The Transfiguration” of Raphael.  What can be more animated than Raphael’s “Paul preaching at Athens?” What more tender and delicate than Mary holding the child Jesus, in his famous “Holy Family?” What more graceful than “The Aurora” of Guido?  What more deeply moving than “The Massacre of the Innocents” by Le Brun?

But no modern Orator can dare to enter the lists with Demosthenes and Tully.  We have discourses, indeed, that may be admired, for their perspicuity, purity, and elegance; but can produce none that abound in a sublime which whirls away the auditor like a mighty torrent, and pierces the inmost recesses of his heart like a flash of lightning; which irresistibly and instantaneously convinces, without leaving, him leisure to weigh the motives of conviction.  The sermons of Bourdaloue, the funeral orations of Bossuet, particularly that on the death of Henrietta, and the pleadings of Pelisson, for his disgraced patron Fouquet, are the only pieces of eloquence I can recollect, that bear any resemblance to the Greek or Roman orator; for in England we have been particularly unfortunate in our attempts to be eloquent, whether in parliament, in the pulpit, or at the bar.  If it be urged, that the nature of modern politics and laws excludes the pathetic and the sublime, and confines the speaker to a cold argumentative method, and a dull detail of proof and dry matters of fact; yet, surely, the Religion of the moderns abounds in topics so incomparably noble and exalted as might kindle the flames of genuine oratory in the most frigid and barren genius much more might this success be reasonably expected from such geniuses as Britain can enumerate; yet no piece of this sort, worthy applause or notice, has ever yet appeared.