22 PROGRESS : ITS lATV AXD CAUSE. 



Only within these few centuries has painting been divided 

 into historical, landscape, marine, architectural, genre, ani- 

 mal, still-life, &c., and sculpture grown heterogeneouj in 

 respect of the variety of real and ideal subjects with which 

 it. occupies itself. 



Strange as it seems then, vre find it no less true, that 

 all forms of written language, of painting, and of scul]> 

 ture, have a common root in the politico-religious decora- 

 tions 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 Londo7i .Neios 

 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 consanguinity. The effigies on our 

 coins, the signs over shops, the figures that fill every ledger, 

 the coats of arms outside the carriage panel, and the pla- 

 cards inside the omnibus, are, in common with dolls, blue- 

 books, paper-hangings, lineally descended from the rude 

 sculpture-paintings in which the Egyptians represented the 

 triumphs and w^orship of their god-kings. Perhaps no 

 example can be given which more vividly illustrates the 

 multiplicity and heterogeneity of the products that in 

 course of time may arise by successive differentiations from 

 a common stock. 



Before passing to other classes of facts, it should be 

 observed that the evolution of the homogeneous into the 

 heterogeneous is displayed not only in the separation of 

 Painting and Sculpture from Architecture and from each 

 other, and in the greater variety of subjects they embody, 

 bat it is further shown in the structure of each work. A 



