imitations, or perspective skill,
which constitute the highest excellence of the painter, but his power of
creation,--the power of giving ideal beauty and grandeur and grace,
inspired by the contemplation of eternal ideas, an excellence which
appears in all the masterworks of the Greeks, and such as has not been
surpassed by the moderns.

But Art was not confined to architecture, sculpture, and painting alone.
It equally appears in all the literature of Greece. The Greek poets were
artists, as also the orators and historians, in the highest sense. They
were the creators of _style_ in writing, which we do not see in the
literature of the Jews or other Oriental nations, marvellous and
profound as were their thoughts. The Greeks had the power of putting
things so as to make the greatest impression on the mind. This
especially appears among such poets as Sophocles and Euripides, such
orators as Pericles and Demosthenes, such historians as Xenophon and
Thucydides, such philosophers as Plato and Aristotle. We see in their
finished productions no repetitions, no useless expressions, no
superfluity or redundancy, no careless arrangement, no words even in bad
taste, save in the abusive epithets in which the orators indulged. All
is as harmonious in their literary style as in plastic art; while we
read, unexpected pleasures arise in the mind, based on beauty and
harmony, somewhat similar to the enjoyment of artistic music, or as when
we read Voltaire, Rousseau, or Macaulay. We perceive art in the
arrangement of sentences, in the rhythm, in the symmetry of
construction. We see means adapted to an end. The Latin races are most
marked for artistic writing, especially the French, who seem to be
copyists of Greek and Roman models. We see very little of this artistic
writing among the Germans, who seem to disdain it as much as an English
lawyer or statesman does rhetoric. It is in rhetoric and poetry that Art
most strikingly appears in the writings of the Greeks, and this was
perfected by the Athenian Sophists. But all the Greeks, and after them
the Romans, especially in the time of Cicero, sought the graces and
fascinations of style. Style is an art, and all art is eternal.

It is probable also that Art was manifested to a high degree in the
conversation of the Greeks, as they were brilliant talkers,--like
Brougham, Mackintosh, Madame de Stael, and Macaulay, in our times.

But I may not follow out, as I could wish, this department o