and toughness of matter. Alone omnipotent, it converts all things to its own end. The adamant streams into softest but precise form before it, but, whilst I look at it, its outline and texture are changed altogether. Nothing is so fleeting as form. Yet never does it quite deny itself. In man we still trace the rudiments or hints of all that we esteem badges of servitude in the lower races, yet in him they enhance his nobleness and grace; as lo, in Æschylus, transformed to a cow, offends the imagination, but how changed when as Isis in Egypt she meets Jove, a beautiful woman, with nothing of the metamorphosis left but the lunar horns as the splendid ornament of her brows.
The identity of history is equally intrinsic, the diversity equally obvious. There is at the surface infinite variety of things; at the centre there is simplicity and unity of cause. How many are the acts of one man in which we recognise the same character. See the variety of the sources of our information in respect to the Greek genius. Thus at first we have the civil history of that people, as Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch have given it—a very sufficient account of what manner of persons they were, and what they did. Then we have the same soul expressed for us again in their literature; in poems, drama, and philosophy: a very complete form. Then we have it once more in their architecture,—the purest sensuous beauty,—the perfect medium never overstepping the limit of charming propriety and grace. Then we have it once more in sculpture,—"the tongue on the balance of expres-
