Imatges de pàgina
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contend, is written in their histories of their labours. How when the human-headed bull was disclosed by the pick-axes of the Chaldæans, the Arabs scampered off, and how all the natives thought that Nimroud himself the mighty hunter-was rising grimly from the earth, are points in the discovery of this treasure which all should read. The vigour with which English and French explorers have possessed themselves of the treasures of ancient Egypt, the master-pieces from the Parthenon, the strange stone revelations of Lycia, and the majestic colossi of ancient Assyria, contrasts forcibly with the indolence of the Turk, who sat at hand to wonder at the enthusiasm of his Christian visitors. No more pitiful exhibition of a national character could be furnished by any passage in the history of the world than that which describes the ignorant and superstitious Turk grinding the sculpture of the Parthenon into mortar for his dwelling house. Truly, in all respects, is this a matter to be pondered by the general visitor, as he retreats from the national Museum for the third time. He has not passed an idle day here, wandering amid sphinxes, and tombs, and temples, and ancient gods. From the confusion he may gather something that shall not be altogether a useless subject for reflection as he wanders homewards. He may link himself with the remote past, recognise the elements of modern society in these stone revelations of the remote history of the world, feel the vibration of the great human heart coming to him even from the bowels of Egypt's pyramids. There he has their family histories written on their tombstones by weeping relatives; their religion, with all its debasing idolatry, strong in death, exhibiting pleasantly the firmness of their faith; splendid sarcophagi tardily wrought from massive rock, yet perseveringly

accomplished in the strong conviction that the dead would shake off the mummy bandages, discharge the natron from their pores, reclaim their scattered intestines, pass the brain back through the nose into the skull, and once more feel quickening blood in the veins. Proudly men of the passing century look back upon all this worship of animals, upon the Egyptian Anubis, and the intestine genii with their animal heads; but even here, in this field of speculation, where the historian's hand wanders unsteadily about his page, and all wears a mythical air, pulses of human emotion are felt that assure us of the remote past. Strange that the chief chapters of ancient Egypt's history should have been written for moderns by her undertakers!

END OF THIRD VISIT.

VISIT THE FOURTH.

THE visitor will now enter the museum to complete his inspection of its contents. His way lies once more to the west on entering the great hall, into the first Sculpture Gallery, or that which he will recognise as leading into the great central saloon. Here, as he pauses on the threshold of a noble room filled with splendid specimens of Greek art, he may recur to the historical points which these works illustrate. Throughout this, his last visit, he will be occupied wth the examination of the works of the ancient Greeks. These works, as he will notice, are of various degrees of excellence. Already has he examined the rude labours of the Greek sculptors of Xanthus; and to-day his journey will be amid those more modern and perfect labours, performed when the talent of the Greeks was chiefly concentrated upon European ground. Although these glories of remote antiquity are here mostly in an admirable state of preservation, historians are generally lost in contradictions when they attempt to point to any particular piece of statuary as the labour of any known sculptor. The sculptor of the Venus de Medici is not known; and the Apollo Belvedere is a masterpiece, the author of which lies shrouded in the depths

of the past. Rude and harsh were the early performances of the Greeks. We have histories of Greek sculptors who flourished many hundred years before our æra; and of these the mythical Dædalus is the oldest and most renowned. This sculptor is reported to have flourished fourteen centuries before the Christian æra. He is said to have fashioned colossal wooden statues; and Pausanias mentions his statue of Hercules in the possession of the Thebans, and his wooden Venus in the possession of the Delians. His Hercules, however, appears to have been considered his masterpiece; and Flaxman, commenting upon the antiquity of the figures of Hercules found on some coins, seems to think that we may not unreasonably conjecture that these are copies from the masterpiece of Dædalus. Other sculptors of the same name, appear to have flourished in the Achaic period of Grecian history. Indeed it is shrewdly conjectured that Daedalus derived his name from wooden statues called Dædala; and that amongst the ancient Greeks, Dædalus meant nothing more than one skilled in making Dædala. The earliest sculptures of the Greeks were fashioned of materials easily worked, as plaster, clay, and wood. Later they worked ivory, and began to understand the value of metals in statuary; and about five centuries before the Christian æra, marble was used by sculptors for detached figures. In the infancy of Greek art, when sculptors were gradually acquiring the skill to fashion their creations out of the most durable material, many combinations of wood, stone, and metal were used, which would sadly shock the modern sculptor's eye;-wooden figures burnished with gold, and with painted vermilion faces, were fashioned in the age of Phidias; and it is believed by some, that this immortal sculptor helped to produce a statue of Jupiter, the face of which was of ivory and

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