"Poetry, Painting, and Sculpture," says Cunningham, "are of the same high order of genius; but, as words provide at once shape and color to our thoughts, Poetry has ever led the way in the march of intellect: as material forms are ready made, and require but to be skillfully copied, Sculpture succeeded; and as lights and shadows demand science and experience to work them into shape, and endow them with sentiment, Painting was the last to rise into elegance and sublimity. In this order these high Arts rose in ancient Greece; and in the like order they rose in modern Italy; but none of them reached true excellence, till the light of knowledge dawned on the human mind, nor before civilization, following in the steps of barbarism, prepared the world for the reception of works of polished grace and tranquil grandeur. "From the swoon into which the Fine Arts were cast by the overthrow of the Roman Empire, they were long in waking: all that was learned or lofty was extinguished: of Painting, there remained but the memory, and of Sculpture, some broken stones, yet smothered in the ruins of temples and cities the rules which gave art its science were lost; the knowledge of colors was passed away, and that high spirit which filled Italy and Greece with shapes and sentiments allied to heaven, had expired. In their own good time, Painting and Sculpture arose from the ruins in which they had been overwhelmed, but their looks were altered; their air was saddened; their voice was low, though it was, as it had been in Greece, holy, and it called men to the contemplation of works of a rude grace, and a but dawning beauty. These 'sisters-twin' came at first with pale looks and trembling steps, and with none of the confidence which a certainty of pleasing bestows: they came too with few of the charms of the heathen about them: of the scientific unity of proportion, of the modest ease, the graceful simplicity, or the almost severe and always divine composure of Greece, they had little or none. But they came, nevertheless, with an original air and character all their own; they spoke of the presence of a loveliness and sentiment derived from a nobler source than pagan inspiration; they spoke of Jesus Christ and his sublime lessons of peace, and charity, and belief, with which he had preached down the altars and temples of the heathen, and rebuked their lying gods into eternal silence.