FINE ARTS. 187 



that the surface of the earl}i still retauis. However, it is not our oI)ject 

 to connect a history of the human race with the monuments of art; it 

 is merely our design to write the history of art itself according to the 

 different grades of its peculiar development. But as we by no means 

 perceive in general history a progress of culture at all times alike, inas- 

 much as alongside of people that already stand upon a higher elevation, 

 we likewise see those who have not yet raised themselves from a lower, 

 yea, even from the lowest degree of culture, it will be indifferent to our 

 object to what period of history those monuments belong, in which we 

 perceive the first dawnings of art. Jt is enough for us, to seek out such 

 monuments, no matter where, and in them to examine what is the con- 

 dition of man's artistic activity in its first manifestations. 



In Asia, which is usually designated as the cradle of the human race, 

 we are acquainted with but few monuments that carry us back to the 

 origin of the arts, and these remains are, moreover, dismembered, and 

 of no particular importance. On the contrary, we find a great number 

 of such works in northern Europe. They belong to the original inhab- 

 itants of these countries, the Celtic tribes in France, (especially in the 

 basin of the Loire, and in Bretague,) and in the British Isles, to the Ger- 

 manic tribes in Germany (especially northern Germany,) and in the 

 Scandinavian countries, and perhaps also to the Slavic races, in the north- 

 ern parts of modern Germany, where the Slavic and Germanic elements 

 came in contact. We have nothing whereby we can positively determine 

 the period when these monuments were erected ; in general we must 

 consider them as cotemporary with the youth of these people, that is, as 

 nearly corresponding with the earlier times of the Roman state with 

 whose history their's is in many ways interwoven; it is also possible, 

 that in some countries those monuments continued to be erected until 

 the middle ages, so late as which Christianity was but i)arlially intro- 

 ced. They do not, therefore, belong to the most remote periods of hu- 

 man history, but bear throughout the stamp of a simple and original 

 state of culture ; and even where the more refined civilization of the 

 Romans was mingled with it, — as was especially the case in Gaul, after 

 the subjugation of that country by the Romans, — there the elements of 

 the more highly refined people, show themselves so predominant in 

 the monuments produced by this commingling, especially in their artist- 

 ic form, that the originality of the works in question appears but the 

 more clearly from the contrast. In other respects, although the field 

 covered by these monuments is so extensive, no essential dilierence ap- 

 pears to prevail in the principles according to whicli they were erected; 

 at all events, the [tarliculur naUonal characteristic.-^ of thc.-c people be- 



