CHAPTER IV.

THE FINE ARTS, AS AUTHORITIES FOR HISTORICAL RECORDS, INVESTIGATED AND ESTABLISHED.

SECTION I.

ARCHITECTURE AND SCULPTURE.

If it were possible to place within an Ephesian Temple, every historic book, manuscript, and engraving in the world, and then the sacrilegious torch of a modern Erostratus should entirely consume them, whereby the only apparent knowledge to be obtained would be from tradition,--yet the marble and stone quarries of the earth have issued those volumes composed and fashioned by the hands of man, that would restore the progressive history of the arts and civilization.

Architecture has erected his lofty temples, palaces, and mansions; and Sculpture has, with her magic wand, charmed and adorned them with historic facts, legends, and romance: the former planned the porticoes, columns, and proportions; but the latter was the power whereby they were fashioned and embellished. Architecture by his peculiar characteristic gives intelligence as we wander amid his works, that we are on the land of Egypt, or the plains of Pæstum: on the Acropolis of Athens, or the land of Romulus and the Coliseum: and whether we gaze upon the sky-pointing Pyramid, the stern or the graceful Doric, the Ionic of the Ilissus, or the acanthus-crowned Corinthian,--they one and all have voices of oracular power, proclaiming to the classic scholar the Nation from whence they arose to life and beauty.

Even the horizontal and curved lines of Architecture have their especial records; for they state the time in the history of the Arts, when they were erected, even without a sculptured cipher;--for the level lines of the Cyclopean and Egyptian walls, with their attendant apertures, give certain knowledge that they were erected _before_ the principle of the Grecian _arch_ was known or practised.

Sculpture has a more harmonious voice than that of her stern consort;--the graceful bride, whose rock-ribbed cradle amid the Parian hills--whose virgin youth reposed upon the halcyon marble of Pentelicus, has a voice of warm, yet chaste simplicity,--her tones are as sweet, as from lips first nourished on Hymettus' Hill; yet at times they speak with all the solemnity of her consort, around whom she fondly clings, as the ivy around the oak; and like that plant and tree, the sculpture-vine preserves for ages the character of the marble monarch of the Arts, even after his broad-spreading authority has been broken and humbled to the earth by Time and Desolation; or these two destroying powers may be viewed as the Regan and the Goneril, while Architecture is the Lear, and Sculpture the Cordelia of the Arts!

Even as a note of music struck from a chord of Nature vibrates to the heart, in like manner does the voice of Sculpture reach and echo around the walls of Life: it is Poetry's diapason--it speaks of God and His works--of Man in his intellect and glory--of Woman in her charity and beauty: it speaks a language which the unlettered may translate, while to her more subdued or secret tones, the disciples of her heavenly power have but to listen, or behold _her action of utterance_, as developed in her free or drapered limbs, to give the history of her thoughts; nor have those thoughts or attitudes, chaste as the marble they inhabit, ever been conquered by lust or luxury,--that unworthy conquest was reserved for the false disciples of her faith, yet not over herself, but her fair handmaid--Painting. But Architecture and Sculpture have lived on--severe and chaste, stern and graceful, majestic and beautiful--as when they were first created from the Eden of the mind! No sword of wrath has driven them forth to wander as outcasts; but as Messengers of Peace they have visited every clime; they have raised their temples and cities in every land, subjected to one power only--the insatiate monster of the earth, Time--the twin-born with Creation, and who will be the last mourner of Nature and her name! Yet even when their children have been struck down--like Niobe's, by the shafts of fate--still how beautiful in Ruins! Although prostrate upon the earth, yet even in death, they have voices as speaking from the tomb:--but the Parents still live on, ever young and immortal, and can point to the proud remains of their fallen Children, and with the voice of historic truth proclaim their fadeless epitaph and character.

EGYPT! My first-born and consort of the Nile!--while thy Pyramids and Temples shall remain--and they will even to the final tempest of the World--thou shalt be identified from among all the nations of the Earth!

ATHENS!--My favourite daughter! Until the Rock of the Acropolis shall fall,--thy classic beauties,--around which have gleamed the meridian splendour of the mind, will proclaim that Minerva, Plato, Pericles, and Phidias, were thy own!

PALMYRA!--My third joy! Although the wild Arab sleeps within thy roofless dwelling, with the whirling sands for his nightly mantle--yet, while thy Porticoes, Arches, and Colonnades shall be seen, the City of the Desert will live in Memory; for the Spirits of Longinus and Zenobia will be there!

ROME!--My Warrior Son! Thy ancient glory lives in the recorded evidences of thy Parent's Art; for amid the ruined columns of thy Forum glide the spectral forms of Romulus, Junius, Virginius, Brutus, Cato, and of Cicero! Through thy Arches move those of Septimus, Vespasian, Titus, and of Constantine!--And dost thou not speak to all the world from the solemn historic voice of thy giant Coliseum? But beyond all this, from the ashes of thy former magnificence--like the Phœnix upon the spot of Martyrdom, thou hast risen in double splendour to the Glory of THE SAVIOUR and the Faith of an Apostle; and to the triple-fame of Bramante, Raphael, and Angelo!

These are the still-living metropolitan records of by-gone days--from the Heathen to the Christian--they cannot be rejected--from them we trace and prove the æras of the world.

Sculpture has also her own prerogative, apart and separate from her Lord, as a dower-right, a jointure power of instruction; and what immortal pupils has she not produced? They stand as the models of art and intellect--each unapproached--solitary and beautiful,--the human eye contemplates them with the chaste wonder of Creation's daughter--Eve, when from the banks of Eden's limpid waters, she first gazed upon the mirrored image of herself! The Jupiter of Elias,--the Minerva and the Triple-Fates of the Parthenon,--the Medicean Venus and her sister of the Bath,--the gentle Antinöus,--the Athenian Phocian,--The Pythonian Victor--Sun-clad Apollo,--the Serpent-strangled Priest and Sons of Troy, all speak the intellectual power of their mistress: and even the poor Roman captive--the death-struck Gladiator--has been raised by her magic wand from the sandy deathbed of the Coliseum, to live on, unconquered to all posterity!

Sculpture is a title not only applicable to statuary, but to every kind of architectural stone-ornament, and in every stage towards its completion--from the rough-quarried block to the polished marbles of the frieze and pediment: this being admitted, how vast and almost unlimited is the field for historic contemplation! The Antiquary when he removes the trodden earth from the mouldering tomb to trace the deeds of heroes: or from an antique Gem or Medal, raises to light from beneath the dark dust of ages, the bold outline of an imperial head: or, when within the lava-coloured city, a hidden statue from beneath the veil of centuries bursts upon his bewildered sight, he still remembers that Sculpture was the creative power. The traveller who pauses in silent wonder as he views the Egyptian Pyramids (blocks of stone raised to perpetuate a nameless king), turns with redoubled pleasure to contemplate the sculptured marble of Tentyra--in the sight of whose shrines the followers of Napoleon felt amply repaid "for the dangers they had passed." Although the Assyrian Kings have for ages been covered with the sands of their desert, and the wandering Arab sleeps unmolested in the shade of Palmyra's columns, unconscious of his mighty mansion, yet her temples and porticoes speak loudly for the living truth of historic marble.

Greece!--the wonder of the classic age,--the key-stone in the arch of intellect,--owes her glory to Marathon and Salamis, but her living name breathes from the Sculpture of the Acropolis. The proportion given by Ictinus to the body of the Parthenon is fast falling to decay, while the sculptured mantle of Phidias which adorns it adds regality to splendour, and every stone that falls produces but another graceful fold to the gorgeous drapery! Sculpture still preserves Syracuse amid the wreck of time, as when Marcellus wept tears of joy at beholding his mighty conquest: it still points out Carthage, the fatherland of Hannibal, as when Marius upon a prostrate column mourned her desolation. Mysterious Pæstum has no other monument, for her deeds have perished with her records. From Istria to Dalmatia may be traced the historic progress of the art,--the gate of the Sergii, Theatre of Pola, and the Palace of Dioclesian, whose columned wall is mirrored in the Adriatic, all bear convincing testimony. And for ancient Rome!--it is her living history! The Statorian columns of the Forum, lifting high their leafy brows, proclaim the spot where Romulus checked the bold advance of the Sabine Tatius: the solitary shaft of Corinthian form and grace, gives fame to Phocas: the Ionic columns of Concordia's Temple, proudly point the place where Cicero impeached the blood-stained Catiline; while the triumvirate columns of the Tonans-Jupiter preserve the imperial name that witnessed THE REDEEMER'S Birth! The arch of Titus (where the Composite first shone forth) heralds the Conquest of Jerusalem,--its sculpture, a Jewish basilisk, for none of that nation dare pass beneath its gateway. The arch of Constantine, robed in Sculptured history, records the battle with Maxentius, the first victory beneath the Banner of the Cross, and gained by the Christian Prince after his conversion by the vision of the Holy-sign! The column of Antoninus still preserves the deeds of the philosophic Marcus; and while the equestrian statue of the Capitoline Hill presents the figure of Aurelius, the grouped trophies of Marius make known the conquest of the Cimbri! The column of Trajanus blazons forth the wars of the Dacii, thereby transmitting to all ages the costume and weapons of the captives, and of the imperial victors. The circular and columned edifice speaks of Vesta,--her Virgins, and the heathen's perpetual altar-flame: the giant arches near the Forum, of a Temple to the God of Peace, while the earth-buried palace of the Esquiline contained the moving form of that Son of War, who fell beneath the patriot blow of Brutus! The Pantheon,--the Pyramid,--and the Tower,--perpetuate Agrippa, Cestius, and Mætella's fame! The triple-monument of the Appian-Way, tells the historic tale of the first victory that consolidated Rome in early freedom,--it speaks of the Curiatian Brothers who fell for Alba,--of the Horatii that fell for Rome:--the classic eye in viewing those time-honoured tombs looks through a vista of near three thousand years,--it gazes upon the Horatian triumph and his spoils,--it sees a widowed sister's upraised hands in malediction,--it beholds that sister's death from a brother's patriot sword! A sculptured frieze and cornice upon a lone pilastered house, in the most humble street of Rome, speak to the passer-by that within those shattered walls once dwelt the "Last of the Tribunes," Petrarch's friend--renowned Rienzi! Then the blood-cemented Coliseum! It is an history within itself! Commencing with its founders, Vespasian and Titus, and its builders, the poor captives from Jerusalem,--it encloses all the savage and succeeding emperors whose mantles of coronation were there dyed in human gore! Domitian, Commodus, Valerian, and the long line of insatiate murderers of the early Christians! And even Trajan suffered the sands of that arena to receive the mangled body of an Apostle's Minister,--Ignatius of Antioch,--who died like Polycarp of Smyrna, for that Faith which claimed death in cruel torments rather than Apostacy,--from whose lips may have passed the same sentiment as from his successor in martyrdom: "Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He has done me no injury: how then can I blaspheme my King and my SAVIOUR?" Architecture erected the Coliseum, but Sculpture like a funeral pall, mantles this human slaughterhouse of Rome;--not a stone of which, from the base to the ruined cornice, but has an historic voice that speaks, as from the Arimathean Sepulchre of our Religion, of the final Resurrection of those early martyrs to the Faith of CHRIST!

The humble gravestone of the village churchyard is received as legal evidence of death,--it speaks a name, a date, and burial,--the Acropolis, as the tomb of Athens, can do no more, save that it is the record of a nation's downfall, and not a peasant's.

Sculpture can speak even of the Religious mind of the deceased,--bring it to memory, and instruct us as to the means whereby the departed attained his hope of Salvation,--it presents the transparent medium through which he gazed upon futurity, and believed in his approach to God: for the Cross or Crescent upon a tombstone, needs no other language to inform the passer-by, that the departed was a follower of Christ or Mahomet! If then the mind of a solitary corpse can, as it were again be vivified, by merely contemplating the sculptured emblem of the dead, and that from a single gravestone, may not entire nations be historically resuscitated, when the human eye and mind are brought to gaze upon, and investigate whole Cities of Ruins, with their sculptured Temples, Tombs, and Palaces? Yes! though they should be found amid the darkened forests of the Western Continent, where the panther and beasts of prey were thought alone to dwell. Yes! Palenque, Copan, Chiapas, and their muraled sisters, have historic voices for posterity from their "cities of the dead," the Pompeii and the Herculaneii of the Western Hemisphere,--yet more aged and venerable than even those victims of Vesuvius!

Architecture and Sculpture then claim the right to be received as undeniable evidences of historical record; and, as such, those two branches of the Fine Arts will be admitted by the reader in support, and in illustration of the Epoch now under investigation. Ictinus, Phidias, and Praxiteles,--Bramante, Jones, and Wren,--Canova, Chantrey, and Greenough, may justly be regarded as historians; for from the volumes of their art, events and æras can be traced and established.

SECTION II.

PAINTING.

Painting,--the most beautiful in the triumvirate of the Arts, proudly follows Sculpture in her classic path,--the precedence only yielded as to one of elder birth, who attired in her snow-white raiment marches forward with majestic step, casting her shadow to the confines of History; while her graceful follower, clad in the rainbow-tinted garments, and having no shadow of herself, receives her coloured brilliancy from the glowing Sun of Genius, and thence in gratitude reflects back her pictorial light to illuminate the mind! This delightful art may be defined to be a species of poetic and historic writing, and subservient to the same ends--the expression of ideas and events--of Nature and her children. It bears resemblance to the diamond in the dark recesses of the earth, which by its own innate quality emits sparkling rays of light, thereby not only discovering its own splendour, but giving a lustre to obscurity.

Painting has her direct claims to be received as authority for past events and records, and in illustration may be cited the Life and History of the SAVIOUR. The pictorial art alone was for centuries the only record whereby the mass of the people could read that Sacred Life. The cross upon the banners, shields, and pennons of the Crusaders, spoke to the Christian heart, even above the din of arms or the yell of battle. When the Latin was the general tongue of prayer and preaching, the pictorial art sprung into life with redoubled power; and from the painting above the altar, representing the Crucifixion, the people learned that Christ suffered,--it alone reached the heart and understanding, while the Latin language reached only the ears of the unlettered. Has not the Life of the Redeemer been traced through every event by the painter's magic art? The Annunciation, Nativity, Disputation in the Temple, Healing the Sick and the Blind, Last Supper and Sacrament, Rejection by Pilate, Crucifixion, and the Resurrection and Transfiguration, are the pictorial Volumes of our religion. Angelo, De Vinci, Raphael, Murillo, Rubens, and West, were as essentially historians of sacred events,--as Plutarch, Livy, Tacitus, Gibbon, Hume, and Robertson, were those of a national and political character.

Painting has traced upon the galleries of Versailles the chief events of the French kingdom--of the Empire and its glory. And in the present day, the new walls of England's Parliament are to be decorated with her deeds of chivalry--sacred to her historic and undying fame!

The walls of the American capital contain the imperishable history of Washington, and the Freedom of the Western Hemisphere! Paintings then will not be rejected as evidences of events, or of religious and national records.

SECTION III.

COINS AND MEDALS.

These are admitted species of historic evidence, and as lasting ones, perhaps, beyond all others. A series of them is the most certain method of arranging a chronological tablet, and thereby preserving the data of history, mythology, portraits, customs, and art.

The reader will excuse the relation of an anecdote, to which may be traced the production of the present work. At the early age of nine years, a small ancient coin came into the accidental possession of the writer; its stamp and character were enveloped in mystery, and recourse was had to an antiquary to decipher them. The obverse of the coin contained a profile head, and around it the letters {AVGVSTVS}: on the reverse, a Temple with the doors closed, surmounted by the word {PROVIDENTIA}. The explanation was as follows: viz.--A coin of Augustus Cæsar--the Temple was that of Janus, the doors of which had been _open_ for nearly two centuries, as emblematical of the continuance of Roman warfare with foreign countries; but on the coin the doors were _closed_, and with the word of thanksgiving, were symbolical of universal peace, thus proving that the coin was struck the very year in which the Saviour was born! Thus upon one coin were illustrated the features of the second Roman Emperor,--Mythology, Cessation of War,--the downfall of Brutus and Cassius,--the defeat of Anthony,--and the Birth of Christianity! This simple incident made so powerful an impression upon the boyhood of the relator, that to it he has always traced the foundation of his Scriptural, Historical, and Poetical studies, together with an enthusiastic devotion to the Fine Arts.

The description of the above coin will illustrate the historical intelligence to be derived from their perusal. A medal is an especial mode of recording tributary honour to individuals--literary, civil, or military;--they become heirlooms in family possessions, and are transmitted from sire to son, as absolute records of their ancestors' fame. They are also struck in celebration of national events, and thence become records of a people. So assured was Napoleon of this, that a series of his medals are a complete history of his victories, from his Consulate to his loss of the Empire; and that event at Waterloo was recorded by Great Britain upon her medals, for even the soldiers as well as officers. Denon of France, and Wyon of England, are names as artists worthy to record the victories of Napoleon and Wellington.

Architecture, Sculpture, Paintings, Coins, and Medals, from the investigation contained in the previous pages (we submit to the judgment of the reader), are established as authorities for historical records.

SECTION IV.

ENGRAVED GEMS.

This is a branch of the Fine Arts, the most ancient in practice--or that is mentioned in history, sacred or profane; and although gems are not received like coins or medals, as conclusive proofs of events, yet they cannot be rejected on the score of doubtful antiquity. Seals and signet-rings are of course included in the term "engraved gems," and they bear the heraldic arms of family honours, their names and actions are traceable, and thus they illustrate the chivalric dignities of the original owners. The style of ancient art (even without a date to the gem) will carry the inquiring mind to the æra of the artist, and thence establish at least the century in which they were engraved.

Of the antiquity of gem engraving, the Bible bears conclusive evidence. In the graphic description of the priestly garments of Aaron, [Exodus xxviii.] it states that the shoulder ornaments of the Ephod are to be engraved stones, each containing six of the names of the Tribes of Israel. "And thou shalt take two onyx stones and _grave_ on them the names of the Children of Israel: six of their names on one stone, and the other six names of the rest on the other stone, according to their birth. With the work of _an engraver_ in stone, _like the engravings of a signet_, shalt thou _engrave_ the two stones with the names of the Children of Israel," &c. (verses 9, 10, and 11.)

Aaron's "breastplate of judgment" was to contain twelve precious stones or gems, each stone to have engraved upon it the name of a Tribe of Israel. "And thou shalt set in it settings of stones, even four rows of stones: the first row shall be a sardius (_i. e._ ruby), a topaz, and a carbuncle: this shall be the first row. And the second row shall be an emerald, a sapphire, and a diamond. And the third row a ligure, an agate, and an amethyst. And the fourth row a beryl, and an onyx, and a jaspar: they shall be set in gold in their enclosings. And the stones shall be with the names of the Children of Israel, twelve, according to their names, _like the engravings of a signet_: every one with his name shall they be according to the twelve tribes." (v. 17--21.)

The gold mitre for the High Priest is thus described: "And thou shalt make a plate of pure gold, and grave upon it, like _the engravings of a signet_--HOLINESS TO THE LORD"--(v. 36). From the triplicated sentence in the above quotations--viz., "like the engravings of a signet," it is proved that gem engraving was practised _anterior_ to the time of Aaron, who officiated 1491 years before Christ. The great antiquity, therefore, of sculptured gems, will not be questioned; and their mottoes, ciphers, or style of art, may speak of a people, their epochs, or their progress in civilization.

In the development of the present work, every branch of the Fine Arts will be brought forward to uphold and substantiate this Tyrian Æra--they having all obtained in the Western hemisphere previous to the time of Columbus,--which period (anterior to the Genoese, 1492, A. D.) is contemplated by the new historic term--_Ancient America_.