It has been said that the history of sculpture is almost the history of idolatry. Religious feeling doubtless had Its share in forwarding the progress of the arta; for man, even in his rudest state, always has a belief that good and evil etuauato from some superior power ; and, unable to comprehend a divine essence or spirit, has by degrees been led to offer hia addresses to some visible object as its representative. But it seems probable that the first images or statues were of inen rather than of gods : and thus that human idols preceded those of divinities. This supposition is strengthened by the fact that the heavenly bodies were the earliest objects of worship among the heathen nations; and the symbols that were afterward, dedicated to them were most likely merely pillars of a conical or pyramidal form, and not• imitations of the human figure ; and when such works are referred to and called "graven images" by Moses, it has ingeniously been supposed to be in allusion to the signs or hieroglyphics inscribed or cut on them. The aun was worshipped at Emma under the form of a black conical atone with marks to represent the sun. (Herodiau, v. 6; Gibbon, voL vi.) Traditional accounts of wonderful feats in arms, the real or fabled history of a conqueror, or a lawgiver, or the founder of a nation, led in all probability to the first attempts at making a portrait figure or image, which a rude and uninformed people, always attracted by the marvellous, associating with it actions of supernatural prowess, would soon learn to contemplate with feelings both of admiration and of awe. Extraordinary respect would lead to the payment of extraordinary honours ; and the elevation of heroes into divinities would be attended with little difficulty when time had obscured the real existence of the personages and weakened the remembrance of their actions. The imagination would easily be worked upon while the eye contemplated these first rude attempts at form ; and thus men would be elevated into gods.
The oldest idols of Egypt, no less than the monstrous images of the Buddhists and Chinese, were probably, in the natural progress of superstition, the fruits of a similar origin. Tho general forms once admitted and consecrated, as symbolical of divine attributes, were afterwards, in some instances, preserved from innovations by the influence of the hierarchical institutions ; and thus was a barrier raised which for a long period was fatal to the progress of imitative art. We are accustomed to look to the East as the nursery in which art and science had their origin; and it is probable that much in the Egyptian and even In the Grecian religious systems was derived from this source. In the representations of the deities of the Hindus, the human form is frequently combined with the brute,—the union of intelligence and force ; and, as we know was the ease with the Egyptians, tho Hindu artists seem to have been subjected to some limitations and to a prescribed type. In all statues and rilievi that remain, many of which must have been executed at distant periods, there is the same prevailing character of form, expression, and attributes ; while out of the immediate pale of their mythological or sacred system they appear to have been less restricted; and some of the sculptures at Ellora and Elephanta exhibit a feeling for composition, and a power of expressing character, which make it surprising that their sculpture never attained higher excellence.
In turning to the inspired writings, we find allusion made to imita tive art in the earliest period of history. The Israelites, after the Exodus, are warned againat the superstitions and corruptions that had by degrees crept in and deformed their primitive simple forms of wor ship, and are exhorted to return to a pure devotion, as for instance in the book of Joshua (xxiv. 2, 14, 15, 23).
IL-sehel, when she left her father's house with Jacob and Leah, carried away "the imago ; " and Laban pursued them in order to recover objects upon which lie seems to have set a high value. This, we believe, is the earliest notice in the holy writings of the existence of such things, and even here we have no particulars by which any idea can be formed of what they were like, or of what materials they were made. That they were small is evident from the cireunistanee of Rachel being able to carry them away unobserved, as well as from the facility with which they were concealed when Laban " searched all the tent, and found them not." No remains of Hebrew sculpture oro known ; but as early as the time of Moses they had attained to a considerable proficiency in some of the most difficult processes of art. The setting up of the molten calf, and the making of the brazen serpent, aro evidence of this. The earliest recorded nausea of sculptors aro in the Old Testament ; Beza lel the son of Uri, of the tribe of Judah, and Aholiab the sou of Ahisnmach, of the tribe of Dan. (Excel., xxvi.) They wero the artists appointed to make the ornaments of the Tabernacle, and their date is therefore about fifteen hundred years before the Christian sera.
From the peculiar position held by the Phcenioians, and their cha racter for enterprise and ingenuity, it is much to be regretted that wo possess no specimens of their design. The coins of Carthage, a colony of Phanicia, are of too late a date and of too insignificant a character to throw any light upon the condition of sculpture among the parent people. The recent excavations and researches of :tin Davis on the site of Carthage, have not brought to light any productions of a kind to elucidate what is doubtful with reference to the attainments of the Phceniciana in the higher branches of sculpture and of the arts gene rally. We can therefore only estimate their proficiency in all ingenious pursuits from the encomiums so generally passed upon them by ancient writers. While the neighbouring people were in a state of primitive simplicity or profound ignorance, the Phoenicians seem, by a native industry and disposition to exertion, to have made themselves cele brated for their arts and manufactures. Their country was the great mart and magazine of tho known world. The prophet Ezekiel apostro phises Ts-re as a " merchant of the people for many isles."—•` The ships of Tarshiah," he says, " did aing of thee in thy market; and thou avast replenished and made very glorious in the midst of the seas." Homer (` Iliad,' xxiii. 743) calls them " the &denial's, the skilful workers or artificers" (1.134res Tostubalbastes), when he speaks of them as having made an elaborately worked silver cup. Solomon sent to Hiram, king of Tyre, for workmen to build and decorate his magnificent temple ; and the king sent him a " cunning " man, skilful to work in gold, silver, brass, iron, stone, and timber. (2 Chron. ii. 13; and 1 Kings, vii.) The building of Solomon's temple took place about one thousand years before the Christian era.