Note 81 — FOURTH LECTURE.

The whole of the gallery of Luxemburg by Rubens is but a branch of its magnificence: general as the elements, universal and permanent as the affections of human nature, allegory breaks the fetters of time, it unites with boundless sway mythologic, feodal, local incongruities, fleeting modes of society and fugitive fashions: thus, in the picture of Rubens, Minerva, who instructs, the Graces that surround the royal maiden at the poetic fount, are not what they are in Homer, the real tutress of Telemachus, the real dressers of Venus, they are the symbols only of the education which the princess received. In that sublime design of Michael Agnolo, where a figure is roused by a descending genius from his repose on a globe, on which he yet reclines, and with surprise discovers the phantoms of the passions which he courted, unmasked in wild confusion flitting round him, M. Agnolo was less ambitious to express the nature of a dream, or to bespeak our attention to its picturesque effect and powerful contrasts, than to impress us with the lesson, that all is vanity and life a farce, unless engaged by virtue and the pursuits of mind.