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reflect equally lasting glory on him and them; and when he was drawn by Apelles, the courtiers said there were two Alexanders, one invincible, born of Olympias, and the other inimitable, created by Apelles.

Shall we deem these praises of the ancient painters extravagant? Could they, who transmitted to posterity such splendid monuments of perfect taste in other things, have made a mistaken estimate of the beauty of a picture. We are not fond of indiscriminate eulogy of the ancients. The time is past by, when classic learning was the only test of scholarship, and adulation of the ancients conclusive evidence of correct taste. But the best critics are satisfied of the perfection of Greek painters, at least in Alexander's time, in all the essential qualities of the art. Modern painters may have more of scientific excellence in the management of perspective, and in the composition of figures, but in design, expression, invention, colouring, we do not believe they surpass the ancients.

Happily, the genius of ancient sculptors and architects was exercised on more durable objects than canvass, and works of theirs yet survive, to attest the perfection of the art. Were it not so, sceptical inquirers might as reasonably deny the wonderful excellence of Phidias, as of Apelles. But the broken relic of a façade, the magnificent ruin of a temple or an arch, or a single inimitably perfect statue, has outlived the ravages of time and barbarism, to be the models for us of all that is most beautiful in their kind, and to give us an idea of the miracles of taste and skill, which Greek art could produce. As it is, we meet with no difficulty in crediting the well known story, that Nicomedes, King of Bithynia, offered to discharge the large public debt of Cnidos, as the price of Praxiteles' Naked Venus, which belonged to that Island; or that the offer was rejected by the Cnidians. What is there strange in the fact related by Livy, that when Paulus Æmilius beheld the magnificent colossal statue of the Olympian Jupiter made by Phidias, he was struck with awe, as if in the actual presence of the Thunderer? Well might Lucian hazard the saying that Phidias was adored in his sublime productions; for surely if any thing could furnish an apology for the transfer of worship from the being represented to the representation, it would be the glorious creations of genius, which adorned the splendid and beautiful temples of the Greeks.

Whence this extraordinary developement of art in that ingenious people? It is vain to think of giving credit for their literature and fine arts to the Egyptians. There is abundance of the vast and the lofty in the style of the latter, but they seldom or never embody in their works that ideal majesty, which a perfect taste requires. The pyramids may outlive the wreck of the present races of men, as they have the memory of their builders; but the obelisks and pyramids, to use the words of Volney, "in their massive structure, attest less the genius of an opulent people, the patrons of the arts, than the servitude of a nation tormented by the caprice of its rulers." What is there, indeed, in colossal beetles, in flat-nosed sphinxes, or in heads of Isis with depending cow's ears, akin to the refined elegance of the Greeks? If, as Belzoni supposes, the orders of Grecian architecture were extracted from the confused and multifarious capitals of the Egyptians, our admiration of the original is lost in the surpassing excellence of the copy.

The question then recurs, how were the Greeks enabled to attain that perfection in the arts of design, to which two thousand years have added so little improvement? Did they possess a more exalted capacity than we do? Was the soul among them, endued with more etherial qualities, just as the brow was more relieved, and the orbit of the eye larger, than with other nations? We should not readily accede to this hypothesis. Or did the brilliant, pure, and elastic atmosphere of Greece afford a more inspiring pabulum to her sons, and her exquisite climate, the clearer sunshine of her sky, "the richer burst of her spring," and the more luxuriant splendour of her vegetation make her a more congenial abode to genius than less fortunate lands? This alone, whatever influence it had, will not serve to explain the phenom enon; for the same bright sun continued to shine out upon olive groves of Achaia, and the same balmy air breathed along the shores of Hellas, long after her bards had ceased to sing the accents of inspiration, and the hands of her sculptors had lost the guidance of inventive genius.

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Or was it the stormy agitations of democracy, and the kindling spirit of "the mountain goddess, Liberty," which elicited those masterly displays of intellect, and created those matchless works of divine art, to which we now recur with almost despairing admiration? Much undoubtedly is attributable to this cause. The most splendid epoch of the fine arts

was also rendered illustrious by the birth of poets, philosophers, and heroes, who became the examplars of all succeeding times; and this period, so exuberant of genius, closed with the fall of the republican governments. The capricious patronage of princes communicated a feeble impulse, compared with the eager emulation of rival states, and the keen, ardent, enthusiastic temper, which the popular institutions created and fostered, and which displayed itself in the commercial enterprise, the philosophy, the literature, the zeal for the useful and ornamental arts, the eloquence and the heroism, which have immortalized the petty republics of Greece.

Of this, the wonderfully rapid developement of intellect in our own country may give us no inadequate idea. But how shall we figure to ourselves the effect of the public games of Greece upon the imitative arts? Of exhibitions, where all that was tasteful and elegant, all that was calculated to excite competition, was concentrated, as it were, in a focus of dazzling brilliancy? Where the most perfect models of the human shape were subjected, in their naked beauty, to the eye of the sculptor and painter; and where the successful competitors for the palm of superiority enjoyed honours but little short of those bestowed on the gods?

Potent as were some of these causes, they yielded in influence, we apprehend, to the peculiar mythology of the Greeks. Had they adored the one God as a pure and mystic spirit, the chisel and the pencil would never have been tasked to represent the form and features of divinity; and had they not worshipped gods of a more exalted character than the nation which has been esteemed by many their parent and master people, Phidias would have been commissioned to mould the limbs of a sacred heifer, instead of embodying in statuary Homer's sublime conception of Jupiter shaking Olympus with his nod. Marble or metallic images of immortal beings, the object of adoration; temples erected for their worship; statues of heroes translated to heaven, or of living men possessed of heroic or godlike attributes, such were the subjects, to which Grecian art was applied. Here was the secret and mysterious inspiration of the sculptor. He was producing works for immortality; nay, he was modelling the very shape and lineaments of incarnate immortality itself. He was ministering to the pomp and pride, the ceremony and circumstance, of the most splendid and imposing religion, which ever appealed to the imagination of man for support.

His aim was to represent the ideal perfection of divine beings, known to him only by the superhuman powers which they possessed and displayed, and to whose images it was therefore necessary to impart superhuman beauty and majesty; and with all the stimulating motives, which we have hastily mentioned, operating upon him, can we feel surprised that his exalted aim was accomplished?

Supremacy in the fine arts did not pass to Rome with the empire of the region, which was their chosen abode. Whilst in Athens none but men of ingenuous birth could exercise the ingenuous arts, in Rome they were considered a servile occupation. The cognomen of Pictor was probably given to C. Fabius more in derision than in honour; for nearly two centuries elapsed before another person of respectable family imitated his example, when Pacuvius, the nephew of Ennius, painted the temple of Hercules; and these names stand almost alone in the history of the republic. Indeed, the austere conquerors of Greece beheld the cultivation of the polite arts. united in the vanquished people with luxury and effeminacy of manners; and their martial spirit not unnaturally contemned pursuits seemingly adverse to the attainment of eminence in the arts of war and policy, which had procured their own aggrandizement. And when Rome became, under the sway of her Cæsars, the centre of all the luxury of all her subject kingdoms, she was contented still to depend upon Greek artists, and the spoils of Greece, for sculpture and paintings to decorate her magnificent temples, palaces, baths, theatres, and triumphal arches. And although Cicero was candid enough to lament the weakness of his countrymen in harshly disdaining the elegant arts, which his Greek education taught him to admire and prize, yet so inveterate was the feeling at Rome, that her noblest poet could descend, in her noblest poem, to boast of her inferiority in sister arts.

Excudent alii spirantia molliùs æra,

Credo equidem: vivos ducent de marmore vultus:-
Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento:
Hæ tibi erunt artes.

The ancient Romans, therefore, accelerated not the advancement of the fine arts, any otherwise than by giving encouragement and patronage to the Greeks. It was reserved for Italy, in more modern times, when the last faint relic of Grecian glory was eclipsed by the baneful ascendency of the crescent, to catch the expiring torch of genius, from the hands which

were now too feeble to hold it, rekindle its celestial flame, and transmit the sacred deposite uninjured to the rising nations of Western Europe.

[To be continued.]

̓Αναλεκτα Ελληνικὰ Μείζονα, sive Collectanea Graca Majora, ad usum Academicæ Juventutis accommodata; cum Notis philologicis, quas partim collegit, partim scripsit ANDREAS DALZEL, A. M. &c. Editio quarta Americana, ex Auctoribus correcta, prioribus emendatior, cum Notis aliquot interjectis. Cantabrigiæ, Mass. E prelo Universitatis. Sumptibus Cummings, Hilliard, & Soc. Bibliopolarum, Bostoniæ et Cantabrigiæ. 2 vols. 8vo.

THE best criterion, by which to estimate the value of works designed to facilitate the purposes of education, is actual experiment. The present selections from Greek literature have been many years before the public, and have constantly been coming more widely into use. Of the first volume, there have appeared in England and Scotland at least eight, we believe nine, several editions, and five or six of the second; and in the United States, we have now the fourth edition of the whole work from the press of the University at Cambridge. A book, to meet with such success, must be well adapted to its end. In some instances, perhaps, better judgment might have been shown in choosing from the vast range of Grecian eloquence and poetry. We should have preferred specimens of Eschines to the oration of Lysias; Plutarch, one would have thought, had as good a claim to appear, as Polyænus or Ælian. We confess also our inability to discover much to admire in the extracts from the tedious epic of Apollonius. His style is often obscure; his images deficient in simplicity; and his delineations of the passions cannot move the reader, because they are not true to nature. But on the other hand, we have in these Collectanea interesting selections from the three earliest masters of the historic art; and now the new edition contains two passages of great value from Polybius. Isocrates is introduced to the young with the wise language of virtue and experience on his lips ;-the best parts of the Philippics of Demosthenes, and a celebrated passage from his oration for his Crown, cannot fail to convey an idea of his superiority in

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