It is surprising that in the history of the arts the Homeric period is made of so little account. We are inclined to believe that the arts had reached a high state, at least of workmanship; that they were subsequently lost, and revived. If Homer and Hesiod, the eldest of heathen authors, introduced into their poems elaborate descriptions of the shields of Hercules and Achilles, and in some degree spoke of the actual workmanship, can we believe that either of them treated of things totally unknown at the times they wrote? If so, they were inventors—or at least one of them—of the arts they describe. It is all very well to ascribe all that we read of as mere poetry; but poetry, however it invents, or partakes of invention, builds invention on fact. It would not invent an art, and offer it to the world as a thing already known. The shields exhibit extraordinary workmanship, which is thought worthy to be attributed to the skill of a deity. That of Hercules in Hesiod implies the use of hidden springs, for Perseus is described as hovering over and not touching the shield, and the Gorgons pursuing him as making a noise with the shield’s motion. The gold and silver dogs keeping watch at the gates of Alcinous could scarcely be the unauthorised invention of the poet. Much might be said upon the Nineveh discoveries; references might be made to the time of Moses—and instances more than that of the brazen serpent; the subsequent building of the Temple might supply most curious detail—all these proving the existence of sculptural arts, more or less refined, long antecedent to what we would fain call the revival of art in Greece. But we cannot be allowed space for a discussion not immediately bearing upon the subject of this paper. It may be fairly conceded, that we are not to look to the earliest periods of art for its greatest simplicity. In all countries monstrosities and ornament were more eagerly sought, soon after the first attempts at representation, than accuracy and beauty. The time of the “Fictilis et nullo violatus Jupiter auro,” if not the poets’ fiction, was of short duration. In this paper we treat not of the barbarities of art. Barbarous ages may be of all or of any times. Art having once reached perfection, and having mastered, over the falsities of bad taste, its own independence and emancipation from every other art, we deprecate the return of a barbarism which shall unite it with a gaudy presumption of another and a lower art, subjugating the genius of mind to the meaningless handling of the decorator.