In contemplating such a system, although we ac knowledge the influence of an awful and stern sub limity, yet the feeling is not of that elevating descrip tion which grandeur, whether moral or physical, generally inspires. The mind, on the contrary, ex periences a depressing, an overwhelming sense of in dividual helplessness; while, on its immediate subjects, the operation of such a government must inevitably have been, to produce a gloomy sameness of charac ter, and the most heartless mediocrity of intellect. To improvement of a certain extent in the severer sciences, and in accordance with received opinions, it was not unfriendly; for success in, abstract specula tion depends not on enthusiasm which is kindled by external appliances, nor on the tenderer inspirations of sensibility. But to those elegant arts which derive their existence and perfection from the susceptibili ties of imagination, from the free breathings of genius —the system was death.
Accordingly, in whatever refines, elevates, or soothes the heart, Egyptian art, as appears from the Greek historians, was extremely deficient. In their music and poetry, as in their painting and sculpture, human affections had no place; the modes were severe, unalterable, and consecrated solely to a gloomy and unideal religion. Hence the " bitter Egypt" of the Greeks, not as some explain, indicating the natural saltness of the soil, but because those arts, so cher ished them, which are at once the creation and the solace of sensibility in ardent and exalted minds, there languished and were repressed.
To the progress of architecture, indeed, in some essential respects, this stern polity was not unfriendly. In this art, the principles though few, give rise in their varied combination to more than one source of intellectual pleasure. In the Grecian temple are found beauty, grace, proportion, simplicity, harmony, extent. In the mysterious structures of Egypt vast ness and simplicity are the only elements discernible of the grand. From these, however, the most pow erful, if not the most refined and agreeable emotions are experienced; long withdrawing lines, unbroken surfaces, large masses, simple contours, even should the individual forms be destitute of proportion and grace, will always produce grand and solemn effects, capable of being carried to the majestic and sublime.
Thus in viewing the temples scattered over the The baid, those very edifices characterised by Strabo as " barbarous monuments of painful labour;"—in con templating the pyramids whose outline is without variety or contrast, the imagination is exalted to a high pitch of awe and astonishment. But these lofty effects arise from a principle merely accidental, they are not the fruits of intrinsic science or of refined art; they are the inevitable,not the meditated consequents of the system we have described. The eternal dura bility, to which in all their designs and institutions the hierarchy aspired, necessarily pointed out the selection of a style of architecture, retaining, as the most substantial, only the simplest forms and the largest masses.
These remarks, and our observations generally on the tendency and spirit of Egyptian government as regards the arts, are farther corroborated by the fact, that even to their very measurements, all the sacred edifices of ancient Egypt appear to have been con structed on one and the same unvarying model; without accommodation whatsoever to situation or circum stances.
A system, whose influence thus produced a species of sublimity in architecture, would operate fatally upon sculpture. Attention to durability, regardless of elegance as a primary object, enormous masses and extended lines, so imposing in the former, would, in the latter, produce rigid and motionless figures, de void of sentiment as without beauty. Such, accord ingly, is the character of the genuine monuments of Egyptian statuary. The essential elements of the beautiful are present—simplicity and breadth; but beauty is not elicited; it is the simple uninspired by any feeling of the true, the natural or the graceful; breadth without harmony or proportion of parts, ex hibiting lifeless and inert magnitude. A remark bear ing on their arts generally may, with peculiar pro priety, be applied to the sculptures of the Egyptians. that in these we see only the records of power, of pa tience, and of labour, not the creations of mind, of taste, or of genius. But sculpture among this people laboured under particular disadvantages. It was con sidered as exclusively attached to religion, and em ployed in representations of divinities, priests, and kings—personages to whom only statues were allowed to be erected, for the figures to be found in tombs ap pear to have been merely symbolical decorations. Now in all these, even in the last, the forms, modes, and expressions were unalterably fixed—and fixed too from types frequently of the most hideous description, at best ill imagined and little adapted to the objects and spirit of the art. This religion also, to the con secration of whose absurdities the noblest of the arts was thus enslaved, was wholly metaphysical and alle gorical, not admitting hero-worship, which, by min gling images of human sympathy and virtue, with abstract and exalted conceptions, tended so materially to elevate the style of composition among the Greeks. The Egyptian artist, therefore, even had he been per mitted to deviate from his model, had no inducement, and no ennobling source whence to derive beauty. Imagination wanted materials, which neither the sub ject nor living nature, as he saw it, could supply. Again, sculpture not only suffered from the general disadvantage of hereditary and unchanging profes sions, a regulation which repressed every thing like the successful predilections of genius; but as a farther security against the possibility of innovation, slaves educated under the eye of the priests were entrusted with the execution of the most sacred, and, conse quently, most splendid and important monuments. The art was thus degraded into a servile occupation, and the last hopes of eminence, honour and indepen dent reward, extinguished.