Note 17 — VALUE OF THE STUDY OF ART.

There is a bust of Julius Cæsar in England of which a cast or a copy should be by the side of every expounder of the Commentaries. The presence of the bust would give new life to the narrative, for there is more life in the marble than in the writing. There are in the Louvre, placed side by side, three representations of Nero which tell the story of the man more graphically than the pages of Suetonius. The first represents the youth, whose thoughts are pure, hopes bright, and resolves noble. The second shows the conflict with evil and the beginning of the triumph of sin. The third is so monstrous in its brutality and lust that it must have been taken but a short time before the catastrophe which terminated the matricide's career. Historians may detail the circumstances of the fall of Rome, philosophers may investigate the causes which led to it, but that hideous face in the Louvre tells the whole story with a force so startling, so instantaneous, that history and philosophy seem weak and wanting.