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plify on a great scale the function of art as an instrument of 

 education. After quoting a passage from Humboldt on land- 

 scape painting, considered as an incitement to the study of 

 nature, he proceeded to advocate the decoration of the walls of 

 school-rooms, not only with maps on a large scale, but with 

 fresco paintings of the characteristic scenery and vegetation of 

 different lands. But there was a higher world, the knowledge 

 of which was more important both to the young and the old. 

 Man was more noble than the earth he inhabited; and art 

 might be made directly subservient to the work of educating 

 man in the past history and present development of his race. 

 The character of a people was revealed, not only by its litera- 

 ture but by its art. Some nations, as the Egyptians, the 

 Etrurians, the Assyrians, and the Mexicans, had left no record 

 of themselves except in their art. But even of the Greeks and 

 Romans, it was true, that their art revealed to us that which 

 their literature would have left obscure. It was pointed out, 

 in the case of the Greeks more especially, how a symbolical 

 language was to be read, not only in their sculpture, but even 

 in their domestic implements. The monuments of the 

 Romans were rather of the construction than the representa- 

 tion kind : yet even they were surrounded in their daily life 

 by sculpture and statuary; and, therefore, they might be 

 studied, like the Greeks, through the medium of art. Exam- 

 ples were given from ^schylus and Aristophanes of the illus- 

 trations which the Athenian poets receive from an accurate 

 knowledge of the statues in the Acropolis, Of all poets, 

 perhaps Horace is the most statuesque. It is impossible for 

 any one, who has realised to himself the aspect of Roman 

 cities and Roman houses, not to feel continually that this 

 image and that phrase must have been consciously or uncon- 

 sciously suggested by groups of statuary, or single figures, or 

 paintings with which he was familiar. Thus the best commen- 

 tary on Horace was to be found in Mr. Scharf's drawings in 

 Milman's edition. Nor was it poetry alone which was illumi- 



