e to pursue the subject. Vitruvius (on Architecture,
translated by Gwilt) writes at some length on ancient wall-paintings.
The finest specimens of ancient paintings are found in catacombs, the
baths, and the ruins of Pompeii. On this subject Winckelmann is the
great authority.

ANCIENT SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE.

ASTRONOMY, GEOGRAPHY, ETC.

2000-100 B.C.

It would be absurd to claim for the ancients any great attainments in
science, such as they made in the field of letters or the realm of art.
It is in science, especially when applied to practical life, that the
moderns show their great superiority to the most enlightened nations of
antiquity. In this great department of human inquiry modern genius
shines with the lustre of the sun. It is this which most strikingly
attests the advance of civilization. It is this which has distinguished
and elevated the races of Europe, and carried them in the line of
progress beyond the attainments of the Greeks and Romans. With the
magnificent discoveries and inventions of the last three hundred years
in almost every department of science, especially in the explorations of
distant seas and continents, in the analysis of chemical compounds, in
the wonders of steam and electricity, in mechanical appliances to
abridge human labor, in astronomical researches, in the explanation of
the phenomena of the heavens, in the miracles which inventive genius has
wrought,--seen in our ships, our manufactories, our printing-presses,
our observatories, our fortifications, our laboratories, our mills, our
machines to cultivate the earth, to make our clothes, to build our
houses, to multiply our means of offence and defence, to make weak
children do the work of Titans, to measure our time with the accuracy of
the planetary orbits, to use the sun itself in perpetuating our
likenesses to distant generations, to cause a needle to guide the
mariner with assurance on the darkest night, to propel a heavy ship
against wind and tide without oars or sails, to make carriages ascend
mountains without horses at the rate of thirty miles an hour, to convey
intelligence with the speed of lightning from continent to continent and
under oceans that ancient navigators never dared to cross,--these and
other wonders attest an ingenuity and audacity of intellect which would
have overwhelmed with amazement the most adventurous of Greeks and the
most potent of Romans.

But the great discoveries and inventions to wh