One reason, however, why I prefer painting to sculpture is, that painting is more like nature. It gives one entire and satisfactory view of an object at a particular moment of time, which sculpture never does. It is not the same in reality, I grant; but it is the same in appearance, which is all we are concerned with. A picture wants solidity, a statue wants colour. But we see the want of colour as a palpably glaring defect, and we do not see the want of solidity, the effects of which to the spectator are supplied by light and shadow. A picture is as perfect an imitation of nature as is conveyed by a looking-glass; which is all that the eye can require, for it is all it can take in for the time being. A fine picture resembles a real living man; the finest statue in the world can only resemble a man turned to stone. The one is an image, the other a cold abstraction of nature. It leaves out half the visible impression. There is therefore something a little shocking and repulsive in this art to the common eye, that requires habit and study to reconcile us completely to it, or to make it an object of enthusiastic devotion. It does not amalgamate kindly and at once with our previous perceptions and associations. As to the comparative difficulty or skill implied in the exercise of each art, I cannot pretend to judge: but I confess it appears to me that statuary must be the most trying to the faculties. The idea of moulding a limb into shape, so as to be right from every point of view, fairly makes my head turn round, and seems to me to enhance the difficulty to an infinite degree. There is not only the extraordinary circumspection and precision required (enough to distract the strongest mind, as I should think), but if the chisel, working in such untractable materials, goes a hair’s-breadth beyond the mark, there is no remedying it. It is not as in painting, where you may make a thousand blots, and try a thousand experiments, efface them all one after the other, and begin anew: the hand always trembles on the brink of a precipice, and one step over is irrecoverable. There is a story told, however, of Hogarth and Roubilliac, which, as far as it goes, may be thought to warrant a contrary inference. These artists differed about the difficulty of their several arts, and agreed to decide it by exchanging the implements of their profession with each other, and seeing which could do best without any regular preparation. Hogarth took a piece of clay, and succeeded in moulding a very tolerable bust of his friend; but when Roubilliac, being furnished with paints and brushes, attempted to daub a likeness of a human face, he could make absolutely nothing out, and was obliged to own himself defeated. Yet Roubilliac was a man of talent, and no mean artist. It was he who, on returning from Rome where he had studied the works of Bernini and the antique, and on going to see his own performances in Westminster Abbey, exclaimed, that ‘they looked like tobacco-pipes, by G—d! ‘What sin had this man or his parents committed, that he should forfeit the inalienable birthright of every Frenchman—imperturbable, invincible self-sufficiency? The most pleasing and natural application of sculpture is, perhaps, to the embellishment of churches and the commemoration of the dead. I don’t know whether they were Roubilliac’s or not, but I remember seeing many years ago in Westminster Abbey (in the part that is at present shut up) two figures of angels bending over a tomb, that affected me much in the same manner that these lines of Lord Byron’s have done since—