Music. Rouz'd by her fire the voice of music flows, In proud defiance when the tempest blows.† 300 art of Greece, and that her sculptors were more numerous than her painters. To this national enthusiasm the Grecian statues are principally indebted for their exquisite perfection.---Dædalus is supposed to have been the first who formed a statue; Phideas, Praxitiles, Polycletus, and Lysippus, his most successful Grecian followers. Sculpture, we are informed by history, emigrated from the desolated cities of Greece into Syria and Egypt. She was there employed to serve the pomp and gageantry of courts, and Alexandria under Ptolemy Philadelphus became, in the cultivation of this art, almost what Athens had been. Rome imitated, but never equalled Greece in sculpture. The most celebrated statues which have been rescued from the ruins of time, are the Apollo Belvidere--the Medicean Venus---the Hercules---the dying Gladiator---and the Laocoon.---“ Of all the productions of art (says a recent writer on sculpture and painting) the statue of Apollo is unquestionably the most sublime. It rises indeed as a single figure to the highest pitch of excellence; but I confess the group of the Laocoon, appears to me a superior effort of sculpture." * See in Burney's History of Music, the wonderful effects of this art upon the mind. And an account of its greatest masters. + Not only in the sister arts, Poetry, Painting, Statuary, Architecture. and Music, but in Architecture is the force of Genius discovered. You behold the image of a creative mind in the proportions of a noble edifice. The uniformity and unparalleled simplicity of the Rotunda, the strength and majesty of St. Peter's dome, are not the result of mere mechanical skill, but of a bold and aspiring imagination. The vaulted roof, and the lofty column which seem to rest upon the horizon, and to repose in air, speak the elevation of the constructor's mind. The civilization and refinement of nations are strongly marked by the plan and order of their buildings. The elegance, uniformity, and strength of the Grecian temple, form a fine contrast with the gloom and heaviness of the Gothic castle.---From the houses and pagodas of the Chinese, the wigwam of the Indian, and the hut of the Hottentot, we may almost be taught the characters of their inhabitants. |