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zation had their own splendor as well as their own sublimity.

In the Egyptian collections which are preserved in most national museums the paintings upon the mummy-cloths and cases will be of great interest to the student. The colors of these-mostly blue, green, red, and yellow-are still fresh and bright, and the designs take us back to the days of the Pharaohs. The faces are frequently intended as portraits of the deceased, while the emblems and hieroglyphics usually relate to the state of the departed soul. Sometimes the goddess Isis is seen throwing her arms around the enswathed feet; sometimes the dead is being carried, in the spirit-boat, across the sacred lake; sometimes there are judgment-scenes and funeral-rites, depicted not only on the mummy-cloths, but on the papyri and vases which were deposited in the tombs. In the British Museum are also a color-box, some pallets, fragments of colors and brushes, such as were used by Egyptian painters. Our own collection, made by Mr. Abbott, now in the rooms of the Historical Society, New York, though not large, is worthy of careful examination.

The art of Assyria was of a character similar to that of Egypt; but its architecture, being mostly of unbaked brick, has so entirely disappeared that we have only the traditions of the magnificence of Babylon with its gayly-painted palaces, whose sole relics are the ruined heaps and fragments of tiles still elaborately covered with figures of animals and flowers. Layard also found remains of pictures on the walls at Nimroud and Khorsabad, and traces of color are yet to be seen upon the Assyrian bass-reliefs preserved in London and at the Louvre. In this connection it is curious to notice the

faction; but a mare, accidentally passing, began to neigh at the sight of the charger, and the artist, addressing the hero, said to him, "Is it possible that this animal is a better judge. of painting than the King of Macedon?"

A number of the pictures of Apelles were long held as treasures in the palaces of the Roman emperors. They were also preserved in Grecian art-galleries, such as that of the Acropolis at Athens. Lübke refers to some fragments of the works of other artists of this period which still exist in the tombs of Pæstum, and in the remains of Pæstum which have been carried to the museum at Naples.

After the age of Alexander painting declined to such representations of ordinary life and domestic scenes as are known in modern days by the name of genre pictures. Another branch of art, however, seems to have then developed in the mosaic floor and ceiling decorations, popular among both Greeks and Romans, many of which have come down to the present day, and may be seen in the Roman collections, and in the ruins of the baths of Caracalla and the palace of the Cæsars. They were composed of bits of precious marbles or vitreous pastes, in varied colors and designs. One of the most curious was at Pergamos, and was called "The Unswept House," because the floor ingeniously represented the remains of food, and all that is generally swept

away.

Another interesting relic is to be found at the town of Cortona, Italy, in whose museum is preserved, according to Jarves, a most valuable example of Grecian easel-painting. "It is the head and bust of a young girl, one-third life-size, holding a lyre, painted in a wax medium, on a fragment of

slate. It was discovered in the last century by a peasant, in the earth of his farm. Supposing it to be a votive Madonna he gave it an honorable position in his cottage; but when told by a priest that it was an idol, he used it to stop a hole in his oven. In this position it was seized by his landlord, and after various adventures was given to the museum, on condition of being perpetually kept at Cortona." Among the treasures of the Vatican is still to be seen the famous fresco of the Nozze Aldobrandini, one of the rarest specimens of ancient art in Rome, representing, in a composition of ten figures, a Greek marriage-ceremony-possibly the nuptials of Peleus and Thetis. It was found on the Esquiline Hill, near the arch of Gallienus, early in the seventeenth century, and became the property of Cardinal Aldobrandini; but was finally sold to Pope Pius VII., for more than ten thousand dollars, in the year 1818.

Passing into Italy, we come to many Etruscan tombs; as well as to numberless vases, whose graceful designs are familiar to all travelers, but whose workmanship is suggestive of Grecian skill. The tomb-paintings were generally colored outlines, sometimes of gay and pleasant scenes, with green branches placed between their compartments; sometimes of serious and tender subjects, such as death-bed farewells, where children embrace their dying parents, and by-standers mournfully watch the parting. "A spirit-horse for a man, and a chariot for a woman, are depicted quietly waiting outside, with their winged attendants, until they are needed to carry the departed to their new land." Copies of several of these wall-paintings may be studied in the Etruscan Museum of the Vatican. In some of them horses are represented in

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bright red or bright blue, or black and red. There is also a tradition of an Etrurian artist, who, previous to the founding of Rome, painted at Ardea the cupola of the temple of Juno, which retained its colors till the first Christian century.

Among the Romans native talent found comparatively small encouragement, their intercourse with the Greeks enabling them to supply themselves with much better paintings than their own artists could produce. Early Roman work was principally decorative, though portraits were also in favor. If we rely upon Pliny's authority, we may believe that their landscape-painting was "invented" in the time of Augustus. The Roman emperors were often liberal patrons of art. Julius Cæsar is said to have paid nearly two hundred thousand dollars of our money for two pictures of Ajax and Medea; and Nero ordered a portrait of himself to be executed on a canvas more than 120 feet high. This painting was afterward destroyed by lightning.

Remains of Græco-Roman art are, however, the most accessible of all antique labors. The mural beauties of Pompeii are so bright and fresh, and so well known everywhere through photographs and copies, that they seem almost to belong to modern times. The brilliant reds and soft yellows of their backgrounds show us capacities of vivid coloring among the ancients which we should never have imagined. Floating dancing girls, lovely as Raphael's "Hours," legendary representations, Grecian myths, fantastic animals, and genre sketches, mingled, indeed, with many designs degrading to all true art, still live for us in that buried city, or fade into dimness in the museum of Naples. The Parting of Achilles and Briseus, the Battle of the Amazons, Perseus and Andro

meda, Medea and her Children, and many Homeric subjects, may be particularly specified. D'Anvers observes: "The leading peculiarity of all these paintings is the intensity of their coloring, accounted for by the Italian custom of darkening rooms in the daytime: the lower portions of the walls are always painted in the strongest colors, and the upper in white or very faint tints, thus affording a sense of repose to the eye which can be better felt than described." Similar mural decorations are being discovered among Roman excavations, as in the baths of Titus, in the house of the brother of Tiberius on the Palatine Hill, and in villas dug out in the old suburbs, where the richness and beauty of what Time has preserved hint to us the splendors which Time has destroyed. Exposure to the air soon ruins such fresco or distemper; but we know not what treasures may yet lie hid in the soil of Italy, nor what the enterprise of the present may yet reveal to us of the lost arts of the past. Practically, however, painting may be said to have died in the darkness of heathenism, and to have been born again in the light and life of a Christian world. Very feebly born and very slowly nurtured, its struggles and triumphs were to be upon a different field; and the first efforts of its new mission was to appeal through the senses to the things beyond the senses, and thus to link perception to imagination and faith.