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a great extent devoted to a few objects regained by their religion and suited to their taste for grandeur and durability, Statues of their divinities were made according to one unchangeable set of patterns so that in cases were expedition was necessary 1/2 of the statue could be sculptured in one city, the other 1/2 by another artist in a distant city + the parts, when brought together, were sure to correspond. In the early days of Greece, the Egyp. sculpt [[strikethrough]] ures [[/strikethrough]] ors themselves developed a better taste, which was afterward mastered by the Grecian artists under the influence of more literal institutions to the bell perfection of that diversified character and piece which have immortalized the names of Praxiteles.

The taste for an art which could connect shapeless rocks into the semblence of men, women + gods became a passion among the people who delighted in every development of the human faculties and who commemorated every excellence in multiplied imagery of marble + brass. Conquests of Rome were chiefly distinguished by the acquisition of these statues and to such an extent where they increased by __?__ and the works of their own artists that it is said that prior to the invasion by the goths + the vandals that Rome contained more statues than [[strikethrough]] people [[/strikethrough]] living inhabitants. The

Transcription Notes:
Praxiteles of Athens, the son of Cephisodotus the Elder, was the most renowned of the Attica sculptors of the 4th century BC.