OF THE FINE ARTS. 



exaggerate the looks of the land, and the labours 

 of the people. The statues and pictures, on 

 which Spanish writers lavish so many words of 

 admiration, were, in truth, but uninspired masses 

 and brilliant daubings ; remarkable chiefly for 

 the variety of their colours, and for the bushels 

 of pearls scattered about them in bracelets, and 

 anklets, and bands. Robertson was one of the 

 first to observe that such descriptions contained 

 more of romance than of truth, and an examina- 

 tion of some of those Mexican marvels more than 

 confirmed his suspicions. 



Yet it cannot be denied that the fine arts 

 among those gentle savages had risen higher in 

 science and poetry than with any other barbarous 

 people. Their ornamental works, imitated from 

 herbs, and shells, and flowers, were indeed 

 beautiful, and traced with a neat hand and an 

 accurate eye. Without being scientifically correct 

 they have all that the eye desires, and that has 

 always been found sufficient. Nor should their 

 singular pictures, wrought with various coloured 

 feathers, a more ingenious sort of tapestry, be 

 forgotten. In wood carving they likewise ex- 

 celled ; nay, some of the tatooings of the South- 

 Sea Islanders and North - American savages 

 exhibit much skill and even taste. The inhabi- 

 tants of New Holland seem to come as close 

 to the brute, as lord Monboddo could have 

 desired ; they neither build huts, carve war clubs, 

 nor fashion gods ; yet they now and then paint 

 themselves with care, and when an unexpected 

 feast offers itself, they break into voluntary 

 song. 



The sun of scientific art rose first on Egypt, 

 or on India. History leans to the former, tra- 

 dition to the latter ; but both have the highest 

 claims to antiquity of all the nations of the 

 earth. Looking on the works of both, no one 

 can with certainty say that the excavated tombs 

 and palaces of Upper Egypt are more ancient 

 than those of Elephanta or Elora, in Hindostan. 

 The character of the fine arts in each land seems 

 to be the same, though unquestionably the Afri- 

 can artists wrought with more scientific skill, 

 though not with higher imagination, than the 

 artists of Asia. In both countries their object 

 appears to have been the same ; and in both, 

 architecture, sculpture, and painting, were united. 

 In this they closely resemble, and in this alone, 

 our Gothic cathedrals, where architecture and 

 sculpture blend and unite in one grand harmony, 

 and, 



" Each gives to each a double charm, 

 Like pearls upon an Ethiop's arm." 



The ancient temples, of which we speak, with all 

 the sculptures they contain, seem to have been 



conceived at once : there the sister arts cannot 

 be separated, without the destruction of both. 

 They were in their character religious or monu- 

 mental. Their object was to awe and astonish, 

 and that they succeeded we have the attestations 

 of the wisest and most intelligent of mankind. 



The earliest of the Egyptian and Indian 

 temples intimate that they were formed before the 

 principles of architecture were fully understood. 

 The art of uniting millions of small stones into 

 one elegant and harmonious structure, seems to 

 have been in those days unknown ; and it was 

 perhaps quite as easy to imagine a pyramid or a 

 temple, as to discover cements and metals for 

 uniting the stones, and the means of elevating 

 them a hundred feet in the air. To cut a tem- 

 ple or a tomb out of a solid hill or mountain 

 was one way to avoid the difficulty of uniting 

 many things in one : it was a bold idea, and to 

 moderns acquainted with the facilities of masonry, 

 seems equally laborious and difficult. But they 

 had no scaffolds to raise, no cements to invent, and 

 no powers to create capable of raising columns 

 sixty feet high, without joint, into the air ; or, 

 more ponderous still, those crowning blocks, 

 which lie horizontally over the columns, and form 

 whole ceilings of halls, as are still to be seen in 

 the architecture of the Egyptians. The archi- 

 tects of those magnificent excavations probably 

 smiled when a reformer in art first proposed to 

 saw a rock into a multitude of small pieces ; 

 shape these into cornices, capitals, and archi- 

 traves ; and then, with mortar, metal, and pulleys, 

 proceed to unite them into one lofty and splendid 

 edifice. 



All that the excavating architects required was 

 a correct model, and sharp cutting chisels. The 

 beauty of their work was chiefly internal. A hill 

 with its trees budding, streams running, and 

 flocks grazing, was a palace within, on which 

 were lavished all the taste and invention of man. 

 The palaces imagined by the poets for the 

 fairies and their queen, scarcely surpass the 

 realities on the banks of the Nile, or the hills of 

 Hindostan. The most spacious of nature's 

 caverns, with all their crystallizations, cannot 

 be compared with the stupendous and regular 

 excavations of the hand of man. There are tem- 

 ples extending some hundreds of feet into the 

 solid rock of the mountain, formed with centre 

 and side aisles, supported by wreathed columns 

 or colossal figures of fifty and sixty feet high, 

 carved with great skill, and still exhibiting traces 

 of dazzling colours and gildings, which, in torch 

 light, must have looked truly brilliant. Nor is 

 this the sole wonder ; sculptures representing the 

 gods of the land, the kings of the country, or the 



