-its sculpture, a Jewish basilisk, for none of that nation dare pass beneath its gateway. The arch of Constantine, robed in Sculptured history, records the battle with Maxentius, the first victory beneath the Banner of the Cross, and gained by the Christian Prince after his conversion by the vision of the Holy-sign! The column of Antoninus still preserves the deeds of the philosophic Marcus; and while the equestrian statue of the Capitoline Hill presents the figure of Aurelius, the grouped trophies of Marius make known the conquest of the Cimbri! The column of Trajanus blazons forth the wars of the Dacii, thereby transmitting to all ages the costume and weapons of the captives, and of the imperial victors. The circular and columned edifice speaks of Vesta,-her Virgins, and the heathen's perpetual altar-flame: the giant arches near the Forum, of a Temple to the God of Peace, while the earth-buried palace of the Esquiline contained the moving form of that Son of War, who fell beneath the patriot blow of Brutus! The Pantheon, the Pyramid, and the Tower,-perpetuate Agrippa, Cestius, and Mætella's fame! The triplemonument of the Appian-Way, tells the historic tale of the first victory that consolidated Rome in early freedom, it speaks of the Curiatian Brothers who fell for Alba,-of the Horatii that fell for Rome:the classic eye in viewing those time-honoured tombs looks through a vista of near three thousand years,— it gazes upon the Horatian triumph and his spoils,-it sees a widowed sister's upraised hands in malediction,

-it beholds that sister's death from a brother's patriot sword! A sculptured frieze and cornice upon a lone pilastered house, in the most humble street of Rome, speak to the passer-by that within those shattered walls once dwelt the "Last of the Tribunes," Petrarch's friend renowned Rienzi! Then the blood-cemented Coliseum! It is an history within itself! Commencing with its founders, Vespasian and Titus, and its builders, the poor captives from Jerusalem,—it encloses all the savage and succeeding emperors whose mantles of coronation were there dyed in human gore! Domitian, Commodus, Valerian, and the long line of insatiate murderers of the early Christians! And even Trajan suffered the sands of that arena to receive the mangled body of an Apostle's Minister,Ignatius of Antioch,-who died like Polycarp of Smyrna, for that Faith which claimed death in cruel torments rather than Apostacy,-from whose lips may have passed the same sentiment as from his successor in martyrdom: "Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He has done me no injury: how then can I blaspheme my King and my SAVIOUR ?" Architecture erected the Coliseum, but Sculpture like a funeral pall, mantles this human slaughterhouse of Rome;-not a stone of which, from the base to the ruined cornice, but has an historic voice that speaks, as from the Arimathean Sepulchre of our Religion, of the final Resurrection of those early martyrs to the Faith of CHRIST!

The humble gravestone of the village churchyard

is received as legal evidence of death,-it speaks a name, a date, and burial,—the Acropolis, as the tomb of Athens, can do no more, save that it is the record of a nation's downfall, and not a peasant's.

Sculpture can speak even of the Religious mind of the deceased,―bring it to memory, and instruct us as to the means whereby the departed attained his hope of Salvation, -it presents the transparent medium through which he gazed upon futurity, and believed in his approach to God for the Cross or Crescent upon a tombstone, needs no other language to inform the passer-by, that the departed was a follower of Christ or Mahomet! If then the mind of a solitary corpse can, as it were again be vivified, by merely contemplating the sculptured emblem of the dead, and that from a single gravestone, may not entire nations be historically resuscitated, when the human eye and mind are brought to gaze upon, and investigate whole Cities of Ruins, with their sculptured Temples, Tombs, and Palaces ? Yes! though they should be found amid the darkened forests of the Western Continent, where the panther and beasts of prey were thought alone to dwell. Yes! Palenque, Copan, Chiapas, and their muraled sisters, have historic voices for posterity from their "cities of the dead," the Pompeii and the Herculaneii of the Western Hemisphere,-yet more aged and venerable than even those victims of Vesuvius !

Architecture and Sculpture then claim the right to

be received as undeniable evidences of historical record; and, as such, those two branches of the Fine Arts will be admitted by the reader in support, and in illustration of the Epoch now under investigation. Ictinus, Phidias, and Praxiteles,-Bramante, Jones, and Wren, Canova, Chantrey, and Greenough, may justly be regarded as historians; for from the volumes of their art, events and æras can be traced and established.

SECTION II.

PAINTING.

Painting, the most beautiful in the triumvirate of the Arts, proudly follows Sculpture in her classic path, -the precedence only yielded as to one of elder birth, who attired in her snow-white raiment marches forward with majestic step, casting her shadow to the confines of History; while her graceful follower, clad in the rainbow-tinted garments, and having no shadow of herself, receives her coloured brilliancy from the glowing Sun of Genius, and thence in gratitude reflects back her pictorial light to illuminate the mind! This delightful art may be defined to be a species of poetic and historic writing, and subservient to the same ends -the expression of ideas and events-of Nature and her children. It bears resemblance to the diamond in the dark recesses of the earth, which by its own innate quality emits sparkling rays of light, thereby not only

discovering its own splendour, but giving a lustre to obscurity.

Painting has her direct claims to be received as authority for past events and records, and in illustration may be cited the Life and History of the SAVIOUR. The pictorial art alone was for centuries the only record whereby the mass of the people could read that Sacred Life. The cross upon the banners, shields, and pennons of the Crusaders, spoke to the Christian heart, even above the din of arms or the yell of battle. When the Latin was the general tongue of prayer and preaching, the pictorial art sprung into life with redoubled power; and from the painting above the altar, representing the Crucifixion, the people learned that Christ suffered, it alone reached the heart and understanding, while the Latin language reached only the ears of the unlettered. Has not the Life of the Redeemer been traced through every event by the painter's magic art? The Annunciation, Nativity, Disputation in the Temple, Healing the Sick and the Blind, Last Supper and Sacrament, Rejection by Pilate, Crucifixion, and the Resurrection and Transfiguration, are the pictorial Volumes of our religion. Angelo, De Vinci, Raphael, Murillo, Rubens, and West, were as essentially historians of sacred events,-as Plutarch, Livy, Tacitus, Gibbon, Hume, and Robertson, were those of a national and political character.

Painting has traced upon the galleries of Versailles the chief events of the French kingdom-of the Em