ANCIENT PAINTING AS AMONG THE LOST ARTS. 235 



A little more than a hundred years ago this young painter 

 went to Home for the purpose of perfecting himself in his art. 

 There was great curiosity among the acquaintances he had made 

 on his arrival, to see what would 'be the first impressions of the 

 qnaker artist on beholding the renowned statues of the Yatican. 

 So there was quite a company who attended him on his first visit 

 to that museum. When brought before the Apollo Belvidere, 

 he at once exclaimed, " My God ! how like it is to a young 

 Mohawk warrior." Well, the Roman friends were a good deal 

 astonished to hear their most famous statue compared to an 

 Indian savage. But there was a truth and a praise there which 

 they little realized, as a few words of explanation will show. 



For unknown ages previous to their contact with civilization, 

 the Indian tribes of North America had been almost constantly 

 in active hostilities with each other. Every man's life was every 

 day in peril, and he only who was the swiftest of foot, the 

 quickest of sight, and the most enduring on the war path, stood 

 any chance of arriving at man's estate, and transmitting his 

 powers and prowess to a line of descendants. It was preemi- 

 nently the survival of the fittest. And we may rest assured that 

 all that nature could do to endow that Mohawk warrior with 

 fleetness, acuteness, and endurance, with the exact muscles, and 

 sinews, and weight, and length of limbs, and prominence of sense 

 organs, necessary to the highest display of agility, of quickness, 

 and of vital force, had been given him. What praise then could 

 be greater for the nameless sculptor of this relic of Grecian art, 

 found four hundred years ago in the ruins of Antium, than to 

 say that he had formed the god of the bow, the god of all high 

 feats and adventure, the god that was the embodiment of manly 

 beauty, courage, sagacity, and strength, on the same model that 

 nature was using for her hero and Apollo in the forests by the 

 Great Lakes? 



I have now placed before you, in brief outline, a few of the 

 many noted examples of ancient painting, which the classic 

 authors are unanimous in praising to the full extent of the 

 powers of language. But they do not praise them more than at 

 the same time they extol the beauty and the excellence of the 



