What we read in sculpture is not absolutely death, but
still less is it the fulness of life. We read there the abstraction of a
life that reposes, the sublimity of a life that aspires, the solemnity of
a life that is thrown to an infinite distance. This last is the feature of
sculpture which seems most characteristic: the form which presides in the
most commanding groups, 'is not dead but sleepeth:' true, but it is the
sleep of a life sequestrated, solemn, liberated from the bonds of space
and time, and (as to both alike) thrown (I repeat the words) to a
distance which is infinite. It affects us profoundly, but not by
agitation. Now, on the other hand, the breathing life--life kindling,
trembling, palpitating--that life which speaks to us in painting, this is
also the life that speaks to us in English tragedy. Into an English
tragedy even festivals of joy may enter; marriages, and baptisms, or
commemorations of national trophies: which, or any thing _like_ which, is
incompatible with the very being of the Greek. In that tragedy what
uniformity of gloom; in the English what light alternating with depths of
darkness! The Greek, how mournful; the English, how tumultuous! Even the
catastrophes how different! In the Greek we see a breathless waiting for a
doom that cannot be evaded; a waiting, as it were, for the last shock of
an earthquake, or the inexorable rising of a deluge: in the English it is
like a midnight of shipwreck, from which up to the last and till the final
ruin comes, there still survives the sort of hope that clings to human
energies.
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