Greece was for so many ages the grand and unrivalled emporium of every thing connected with taste, and the exercise of the fine arts, that it has been a matter of fre quent discussion whether that excellence arose from the intrinsic genius of the people, or the accidental impetus it had so early received from the advantages of a popular government. We would say, that the history of the world has furnished no instance where so extraordinary a con currence of every circumstance calculated to influence the development of fine taste was realised, as in Greece. Re markable by nature for beauty of person, the Greeks were led to appreciate its excellence, and attempt the imitation of what was constantly under their eyes. Games were es tablished, in which the prize was given to the most per fectly beautiful ; statues were sculptured, and pictures painted of the victors, offering a subject for the exercise of genius, and a motive to stir up all the energy of emula tion, as the pictures themselves became a subject for fu ture competition. The facility of studying the human form uncovered, in their frequent games, and constant practice of the manly exercises, afforded advantages to the artists of that period, which are refused to modern nations. It roused the ambition to excel, and refined the public taste, even in that class of society to which, in our days, the very idea is a stranger; for in Greece the populace were invited, and took an animated share in the enjoy ment offered to them by the exhibition of works of art. The judgment passed upon them was in a manner matter of state, and of renown to the artist whose works met with public approbation. The state and people contended with each other in honouring the successful competitor. Ac cordingly the opinions of all ranks were so much consulted by artists, that they were in the practice of constantly ex posing their works to public view, and attending to the observations made upon them. They had, moreover, by the means of the constant confluence of spectators assem bled to see their works, an excellent opportunity of study ing the manners and attitudes of the different classes, and the different effects which their pictures produced. Unless their work succeeded in stirring the feelings of the un taught vulgar, as well as the learned, they judged that there must be a failure in some part ; as there is a silent sense in every one, of the good and bad in the imitative arts, although the means of expressing it, or reasoning upon it, is only given to the learned. They thought, with Cicero," cum ars a natura profecta sit, nisi natura moveat ac delectat, nihil sane egisse videatur." But the extraordinary concatenation of favourable cir cumstances which enabled the arts in Greece to reach so high a degree of perfection, as every thing in this world has its limit, was burst asunder after the death of Alex ander. Corruption fixed upon the arts, as it did on the national character and governments of that falling coun try. All the advantages peculiar to the nation became sterile of effect as soon as the fostering principle had with drawn its stimulus; for it is not the possession of single qualifications, but the union of them, that can rouse the vivifying spark. There are authors, who, reasoning from the principle that similar causes must always occasion similar effects, maintain, that no result so advantageous to the arts could have taken place from the prevalence of personal beauty, for instance, or from the facility afforded to artists of studying the human form at the gymnasiums, or in the constant practice of manly exercises, seeing these advantages equally exist now in Greece as in for mer times, without producing any such effect. But the history of the world sufficiently demonstrates how much the most distinguished qualities of our nature nifty lie dormant, until called into action by a favourable concur rence of circumstances. Such was the fortune that Greece experienced in the age of Pericles, when the soar ing genius of the people became acted upon by every stimulus calculated to fire its ambition. Pre-eminent ex cellence was the result ; and that not in the arts alone, but in every quality and acquirement of which human na ture seems capable.
The total degradation of the arts was the work of ages. Although the spring was relaxed which had given vi gour to its movements, the true principles of taste had become so firmly rooted in the Grecian character, as for a time to resist the causes that were leading to its extinc tion. What remained of its artists were employed, not in
maintaining, as their forefathers had done, the glory of their native country ; but in ministering to the demands of foreign luxury. Wherever wealth, or a desire for the elegancies of life, began to create a demand for their talents, the Grecian artists eagerly sought employment ; and even found the means of creating the demand where it did not before exist, by exhibiting their works, and in flaming vanity by painting the exploits of those nations whose support they solicited.
It is curious that the tide seemed at this period to set particularly towards that country whence the arts had ori ginally emanated, as Ptolemy gave great encouragement to Greek artists ; and, like that unaccountable propensity of our nature, the arts seemed to have drawn towards the soil of their origin, there to expire, where they had first seen the light. For in the early ages of Greece, it was from Egypt, as well as from Etruria, that the Greeks sought those acquit ements which they afterwards found means to carry to such perfection. While knowledge flou rished in Egypt, the Grecian youth flocked thither, as in our time to the great seminaries of learning ; but they were held in very small esteem by the Egyptian philosophers and priests, so much so as not to be judged worthy of being instructed in the sacred mysteries. The Greeks bor rowed, notwithstanding, what they could learn of these ab surdities, which accounts for the very great obscurity that pervades the Greek authors as to the origin of their my thology. They seek to veil its origin and their own igno rance of the real meaning of these legends and observan ces, by supplying fictions of their own, and clothing the Egyptian mysteries in fables applicable to Greece, so as to infer their origin as founded on the heroic history of their own country; thus distorting what was already suf ficiently monstrous in its Egyptian form, by adding all the absurdities of Grecian fable. While this sufficiently ac counts for the preposterous nature of that mythology, it leaves us utterly unable to comprehend how a people, con scious of the delusion, and eminent for their intellectual depth and acquirements, should not only tolerate such monstrous trash, but make its observance the object of re ligious awe and duty,—men, who, while they sacrificed to their deities, should, at the same time, tax their artists with making them worship the pictures of their concu bines. It teaches at least this lesson of humility, how very unfit a guide our reason is, when left to itself, and without the aid of revelation : for want of a better creed we are content to venerate the objects of heroic romance, the warriors and leaders of the olden time, who, seen through the veil of fable and mystery, become the usual objects of mythological worship.
We must now follow the enfeebled steps of the arts to Rome. The full tide of taste which for so many ages had flowed round the favoured shores of Greece, and was now fast retiring to that abyss of barbarism where, for a period equally long, it was destined to sink into utter oblivion; seemed willing, for a space, to revisit the course of its early progress. It was, however, but an emanation of the genius of Greece ; for it is doubtful if the Romans can lay claim to any merit beyond that of endeavouring to copy the excellencies they had at length begun to see the value of. However much the rising power of the Roman state may have been engrossed with views of conquest solely, to the exclusion of the arts of peace, or of those ac quirements cultivated by their neighbours, which were un suitable to the austere habits of a warlike race ; it is sin gular to find how very successfully they resisted the intro duction of the ornamental arts, as no trace whatever ap pears for the first four centuries of their existence, of their having even given an asylum to the arts, or at all suffered the seeds of taste to be sown within their iron rule. It was not until the Romans began to despoil Greece of her treasures, and that their generals, returning to en joy the honours of the triumph, sought to gratify their vanity by the profusion and variety of the spoils which adorned their pageant, that any specimens of the fine arts were brought to Rome; if we except the performance of Etruscan slaves, who were employed to work at the der' ration of houses, even at an early period.