OF THE FINE ARTS. 



IX 



serpents, slaves of gigantic stature supporting 

 the roofs or porticos of temples, and colossal 

 figures, half man half beast, guarding the way to 

 tombs or the entrances to palaces, were the 

 subjects on which Egyptian genius employed 

 itself. These were the work of many centuries ; 

 art seemed to have advanced little. There was 

 much to wonder at, yet nothing was poetic or 

 elegant. We marvel how they raised such mas- 

 sive and enormous piles ; we measure the stones, 

 and we calculate the weight of the gigantic 

 statues, but it would be unsafe to commend, as 

 matters of high genius, any of their works save 

 their architecture. The great merit of their 

 conceptions was durability. The people became 

 rich, luxurious, and degenerate, and their coun- 

 try was invaded and conquered by every nation 

 that chose to draw the sword and march against 

 it, from the days of Nebuchadnezzar to those of 

 Napoleon. But so massive and so mighty were 

 the works of the people, that the most savage of 

 conquerors were unable to prevail against them ; 

 they had raised tombs, and temples, and pyramids 

 too vast and strong to be overturned by man, or 

 even by time ; and those structures still stand, 

 among the pathless deserts, to prove that intel- 

 lectual giants lived in the earth in the earlier 



Colossal magnificence seemed the object of 

 the Egyptian artists ; that of the Greeks was 

 simplicity, beauty, grace, and sublimity. The 

 African sculptor desired to astonish ; the Euro- 

 pean wished to delight : the former Avrought by 

 mechanical rules, and produced his figures by a 

 formal process, in which the hand had more to 

 do than the mind ; the latter called in poetry to 

 his aid, and all but endowed his works with mo- 

 tion and speech. Nor did all this difference arise 

 from more dextrous or more delicate workman- 

 ship ; it lay as much or more in the original 

 design. The happiest labours of a Greek chisel 

 would have been unable to redeem one of the 

 most naturally imagined statues of the land of 

 Egypt from the original sin of stiff and corpse- 

 like conception. But this triumph of poetry in 

 art was not achieved at once ; nor did it arise 

 froA the exertions of one master mind. In the 

 earliest and rudest of their statues .something 

 lofty and god-like appears, as it were, in the 

 dawn. In truth, the Greeks were perhaps, one 

 and all, the most imaginative of nations ; they 

 listened to the songs of their bards with a rapture 

 which nothing as divine would excite now, and 

 they wandered among their groves of statues of 

 heroes and of gods, and thought of the time 

 when some achievement of their own would 

 entitle them to similar honours. It is true that 



Greece borrowed the idea of its art from Egypt ; 

 the stiff and inflexible postures of the latter are 

 visible even in statues which have come down to 

 our own days. Ease and nature came with 

 poetry to help the former, and those miracles, 

 not of size but of sentiment, were wrought, com- 

 pared to which (he happiest efforts of the artists 

 of the Nile are no better than the doings of the 

 Egyptian magicians in the presence of Aaron 

 and his rod. 



The poetic feeling of the Greeks is expressed 

 in all their works ; all that they looked on arid 

 loved was at once endowed with spirit and with 

 life. The neighbouring hill had its divinity, the 

 distant mountains were peopled with gods, the 

 woods, and the streams, and the fountains were 

 filled with things immortal and lovely, and the 

 heavens above and the earth beneath teemed with 

 spiritual existence. Nor were they cloudy, and 

 dim, and undefined, like the visions which pass 

 before our gothic fancies. What the Greeks 

 believed in, they imagined they saw ; and what- 

 ever they saw, they had the art to endow with 

 shape, and inform with sentiment. Even their 

 most extravagant conceptions are redeemed by 

 the grace and elegance of their handling ; the 

 Centaurs, half man and half horse, were all but 

 rendered acceptable to the heart by the delicacy 

 with which the fiction was treated. The whole 

 land of Greece, including its isles and Asiatic 

 provinces, was filled with temples, and statues, 

 and paintings. Even this is still visible to tra- 

 vellers ; a stream cannot be forded, a field 

 ploughed, or a grave dug, without finding frag- 

 ments of gods and reliques of heroes. No one 

 need return without the foot of a Venus, the 

 hand of an Apollo, or the head of a Pan or a 

 Jupiter. 



Nor were those statues cold and inanimated 

 personations of popular belief; all was in char- 

 acter and keeping ; nothing was mean or vulgar ; 

 the seal and impress of something divine was 

 upon them. Venus was known by her loveliness, 

 Apollo by his youthful beauty, Juno by a serene 

 majesty, Neptune by his maritime look, Minerva 

 by her thoughtful gravity, Bacchus by his revel- 

 ling air, and Jupiter by the majestic grandeur of 

 his brow. All was action, graceful and elegant 

 action ; there was no straining, no picturesque 

 attitudes ; whatever was done was accomplished 

 with ease, and without muscular effort. The 

 action, too, in which they were put was individual 

 and historic ; Pan played on his pipe, Mercury 

 fitted on his winged sandals, Apollo shot his 

 arrow at the serpent, or sat harping to the celes- 

 tials, Venus showed the golden apple in her 

 hand, not unconscious of the charms which ob- 



