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THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF EXPRESSION

sufferance,” and requires them to be respected in proportionto their stability or duration, or as their influence is moreor less extensive, but never allowed to supersede real immu-table truth. They must have sufferance only as long asthey do not oppose this. Let them be reconciled with it, ifpossible,—if not, ruthlessly swept away. They must yield toit; it must never yield to them.

The province of expression must not he overrated. Wehear it often said that a building should express its destination.This is impossible, not because it is beyond the reach of archi-tecture, but because it is beyond the reach of expression in anyart. The destinations of modern buildings are more numerousthan the distinguishable varieties of expression, not only inarchitecture, but in any thing else,—in music, sculpture, paint-ing,—in nature itself. Expression is not a language ; itswords are too few to serve this purpose. They might becounted on your fingers, perhaps on one hand ; and perhaps, ifthey were thoroughly investigated, they would he found to bethe same in number in all arts, being, in fact, nothing morethan the representatives of the simple qualities or emotionsof the mind. Greater variety can be had only from theirmixture in varying proportions, as all the colours in naturemay be formed from three. In objects seen or examinedmost frequently, as the human countenance, we may discrimi-nate by the poco pith, and poco meno of this or that element, agreater number of shades of expression, than in objects towhich we are not so habituated. Hence, turning from theface to the body, which is seldom seen, or to the unimpassionedwhole of the ideal statue, we find the characters to be distin-guished there extremely few. “ Take from Apollo his lyre,from Bacchus his thyrsus and vine-leaves, and from Meleager the boar’s head, and there will remain little or no differencein their characters. In a Juno, Minerva, or Flora, the idea ofthe artist seems to have gone no further than representingperfect beauty, and afterwards adding the proper attributes[insignia] with a total indifference to which they gave them.”