y and a study for Domenichino,
the Laocooen, so panegyrized by Pliny, the Apollo Belvedere, the work of
Agasias of Ephesus, the Sleeping Ariadne, with numerous other statues of
gods and goddesses, emperors, philosophers, poets, and statesmen of
antiquity. The Dying Gladiator, which ornaments the capitol, is alone a
magnificent proof of the perfection to which sculpture was carried
centuries after the art had culminated at Athens. And these are only a
few which stand out among the twenty thousand recovered statues that now
embellish Italy, to say nothing of those that are scattered over Europe.
We have the names of hundreds of artists who were famous in their day.
Not merely the figures of men are chiselled, but of animals and plants.
Nature in all her forms was imitated; and not merely Nature, but the
dresses of the ancients are perpetuated in marble. No modern sculptor
has equalled, in delicacy of finish, the draperies of those ancient
statues as they appear to us even after the exposure and accidents of
two thousand years. No one, after a careful study of the museums of
Europe, can question that of all the nations who have claimed to be
civilized, the ancient Greeks and Romans deserve a proud pre-eminence in
an art which is still regarded as among the highest triumphs of human
genius. All these matchless productions of antiquity are the result of
native genius alone, without the aid of Christian ideas. Nor with the
aid of Christianity are we sure that any nation will ever soar to
loftier heights than did the Greeks in that proud realm which was
consecrated to Paganism.

We are not so certain in regard to the excellence of the ancients in the
art of painting as we are in regard to sculpture and architecture, since
so few specimens of painting have been preserved. We have only the
testimony of the ancients themselves; and as they had so severe a taste
and so great a susceptibility to beauty in all its forms, we cannot
suppose that their notions were crude in this great art which the
moderns have carried to such great perfection. In this art the moderns
doubtless excel, especially in perspective and drawing, and light and
shade. No age, we fancy, can surpass Italy in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, when the genius of Raphael, Correggio, and
Domenichino blazed with such wonderful brilliancy.

Painting in some form, however, is very ancient, though not so ancient
as are the temples of the gods and the statues that