It is not to be supposed that the civilised people, whatever was its origin, which possessed Greece before the time of the earliest Egyptian colonies, and which in the massy walls and curious treasure-houses, which it has left as monuments, proving a considerable advance in the knowledge of mechanics, had made none in those finer arts that adorn and sweeten life. Neither are we obliged to believe that the Egyptian Colonies, whether led by an unfortunate prince, or composed of men flying from the tyranny of a harsh government, would forget to practise the arts which flourished in their native soil. They might improve the nation on whose shores they landed, and in return be improved by intercourse with it[71]. It is certain, however, that whatever were the first steps of the arts of Greece, they soon out-stripped those of every other nation, making their practice the law by which all others were to be tried for ever. Alas, for the pictures of Greece! they have perished, and are now mere matter of history, and like the hands that produced them Poca polvere son, che nulla sente. But the temples they adorned, the statues that were coeval with them, the bassi-relievi conceived in the spirit that inspired them, are not utterly gone; and while we have them before us, the history of the pictures of Greece may still borrow a momentary reality as we read over the descriptions of the heroes of Polygnotus, and the Helens and Venuses of Zeuxis and Apelles. Of the plastic arts it is scarcely possible to doubt that modelling in clay must be the earliest that arrived at any degree of perfection. The very shaping and moulding of vessels for domestic use, must have given a facility of hand to the potter, highly advantageous when he began to model his first ornamental foliage, and afterwards in his imitations of men and animals. It is a pity not to believe that the first portrait in profile, and the first bust, owed their common origin to love; and after all it may be true. The potter’s art may have formed the clumsy likeness of a human head, and many a rude outline may have been scratched on rocks, or cut in turf, or drawn in the sands before. But Dibutatis tenderly tracing the shadow of her sleeping lover, may still have formed the first individual likeness; and her father’s filling up of that line, the first head in clay that deserved the name of model. At all events, I would have the poets and the young believe it. The tale points to Corinth as an early nursery of art; and we have seen how closely the beautiful vases of that city and those of Etruria resemble each other. Of late years, vessels almost equally beautiful, and not dissimilar in form, have been found delineated in the catacombs of Egypt; but it is remarkable, that although they are ornamented with many tracings and scrolls like those of Corinth, there is no instance of their bearing the human form.