362 THE LAW 0F EVOLUTION CONTINUED. 



virgins, of saints, were coloured;. and it needs but to call to 

 mind the painted madonnas and crucifixes still abundant in 

 continental churches and highways, to perceive the signifi- 

 cant fact that painting and sculpture continue in closest con- 

 nexion with each other, where they continue in closest con- 

 nexion with their parent. Even when Christian sculpture 

 was pretty clearly differentiated from painting, it was still 

 religious and governmental in its subjects — was used for 

 tombs in churches and statues of kings ; while, at the same 

 time, painting, where not purely ecclesiastical, was applied 

 to the decoration of palaces, and besides representing royal 

 personages, was almost wholly devoted to sacred legends. 

 Only in quite recent times have painting and sculpture be- 

 come entirely secular arts. Only within these few centuries 

 has painting been divided into historical, landscape, marine, 

 architectural, genre, animal, still-life, &c, and sculpture 

 grown heterogeneous in respect of the variety of real and 

 ideal subjects with which it occupies itself. 



Strange as it seems then, we find it no less true, that all 

 forms of written language, of painting, and of sculpture, 

 have a common root in the politico-religious decorations of 

 ancient temples and palaces. Little resemblance as they 

 now have, the bust that stands on the console, the landscape 

 that hangs against the wall, and the copy of the Times lying 

 upon the table, are remotely akin; not only in nature, but 

 by extraction. The brazen face of the knocker which the 

 postman has just lifted, is related not only to the woodcuts 

 of the Illustrated London News which he is delivering, but 

 to the characters of the billet-doux which accompanies it. 

 Between the painted window, the prayer-book on which its 

 light falls, and the adjacent monument, there is consan- 

 guinity. The effigies on our coins, the signs over shops, 

 the figures that fill every ledger, the coat of arms outside the 

 carriage-panel, and the placards inside the omnibus, are, in 

 common with dolls, blue-books and paper-hangings, lineally 

 descended from the rude sculpture-paintings in which the 



