Another curious monument of antiquity, which demands the reader's attention, is, Laocoon. - This is a celebrated monu ment of Greek sculpture, exhibited in marble, by Polydorus, Athenodorus, and Agesander, the three famous artists of Rhodes. This relic of antiquity was found at Rome, among the ruins of the palace of Titus, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, under the pontificate of Julius II. and since deposited in the Farnese palace. Laocoon is represented with his two sons, with two hideous serpents clinging round his body, gnawing it, and injecting their poison. Virgil has given us a beautiful description of the fact, AEn. lib. ii.

This statue exhibits the most astonishing dignity and tranquillity of mind, in the midst of the most excruciating torments, Pliny says of it, that it is, opus omnibus picture, et statuaur artis praferendum. - Lib. xxxvi. c. 5. "The Laocoon (Dr. Giles observes) may be regarded as the triumph of Grecian sculpture; since bodily pain, the grossest and most ungovern-able of all our passions, and that pain united with anguish and torture of mind, are yet expressed with such propriety and dignity, as afford lessons of fortitude superior to any taught in the schools of philosophy. The horrible shriek which Virgil's Laocoon emits, is a proper circumstance for poetry; but the expression of this shriek would have totally degraded the statue It is softened, therefore, into a patient sigh, with eyes turned to heaven in search of relief. The intolerable agony of suffering nature is represented in the lower part, and particularly the extremity of the body; but the manly breast struggles against calamity. The contention is still more plainly perceived in his furrowed forehead; and his languishing paternal eye demands assistance, less for himself than for his miserable children, who look up to him for help." - Hist, of Greece, ii. 177.

The Laocoon was sent to Paris by Bonaparte, in 1797.