Therefore I believe in the expressiveness of single lines as symbols of the grandest phases of human Life.  And when one studies Greek Art, the whole motive of it seems so childlike and so simple that the impulse to seek for that little Naiad which is the fountain and source of it all is irresistible.  Look at the line I have traced, and see if there is not a curious humanity about it.  It is impossible to produce it with a wanton flourish of the pencil, as I have done in that wavy, licentious curve, which Hogarth, in his quaint “Analysis of Beauty,” assumes as the line of true Grace; nor yet are its infinite motions governed by any cold mathematical laws.  In it is the earnest and deliberate labor of Love.  There are thought and tenderness in every instant of it; but this thought is grave and almost solemn, and this tenderness is chastened and purified by wise reserve.  Measure it by time, and you will find it no momentary delight, no voluptuous excess which comes and goes in a breath; but there is a whole cycle of deep human feeling in it.  It is the serene joy of a nation, and not the passionate impulse of a man.  Observe, from beginning to end, its intention is to give expression by the serpentine line to that sentiment of beautiful Life which was the worship of the Greeks; but they did not toss it off, like a wine-cup at a feast.  They prolonged it through all the varied emotions of a lifetime with exquisite art, making it the path of their education in childhood and of their wider experience as men.  All the impulses of humanity they bent to a kindly parallelism with it.  This is that famous principle of Variety in Unity which St. Augustine and hosts of other philosophers considered the true Ideal of Beauty.  Start with this line from the top upon its journeying:  look at the hesitation of it, ere it launches into action; how it cherishes its resources, and gathers up its strength!—­ with a confidence in its beautiful Destiny, and yet a chaste shrinking from the full enjoyment of it, how inevitably, but how purely, it yields itself up to the sudden curve!  It does not embrace this curve with a sensuous sweep, nor does it, like Sappho, throw itself with quick passion into the tide.  It enters with maidenly and dignified reserve into its new Life; and then how is this new Life spent?  As you glance at it, it seems almost ascetic, and reminds you of the rigid fatalism of Egypt.  Its grace is almost strangled, as those other serpents were in the grasp of the child Hercules.  But if you watch it attentively, you will find it ever changing, though with subtilest refinement, ever human, and true to the great laws of emotion.  There is no straight line here,—­no Death in Life,—­but the severity and composure of intellectual meditation,—­meditation, moving with serious pleasure along the grooves of happy change,—­

    “As all the motions of its
    Were governed by a strain
  Of music, audible to it alone!”