As this essay is already longer than I intended, I will close it here; and endeavour, in another, to sketch the history of the highest prosperity and gradual decline of art in Greece. The consideration of the causes of that decline belongs to the philosophy of general history. I will only remark, that painting in Greece rose to its highest excellence by individual exertions, exciting the sympathy, and therefore the patronage, of the public generally; that it flourished under the encouragement of Alexander; but that the unnatural fostering of power appears to have weakened the spirit of art, which faded after his time, as those delicate plants which are cherished into extraordinary beauty by the heat of the stove, after a season languish and die, even of the effort that seemed to contribute to their luxuriance. FOOTNOTES: [71] I have heard it objected that the Americans of the United States, though they built towns and established civil governments and so on, thought little of the fine arts for 200 years. That is true. But it should be remembered that the fine arts formed part of the religion of the Egyptian emigrants. The British emigrants, on the contrary, had just quitted a most gorgeous communion, which had employed all the arts in its service, and thus rendered them an abomination to the severe puritans who were in fact flying from the persecutions of the great patrons of art in their days. [72] Lecture 1. [73] Pausanias, to whom we owe the largest catalogue of antique works of art, travelled about the year 170 of our era; and the objects he describes could not have been suddenly dispersed even after his time. [74] Contemporary with Homer was Jeroboam, who set up the two calves or heifers in two cities of Palestine. [75] 1 Kings, ch. vii., v. 13. In 2 Chron. ch. ii., v. 14, he is not named, and his mother is said to have been of the daughters of Dan; his qualifications were, that he was “skilful to work in gold and in silver, in brass, in iron, in stone and in timber, in purple, in blue, in fine linen, and in crimson; also to grave any manner of graving, and to find out every device which shall be put to him.” Scripture tell us likewise, that Solomon built or repaired many cities. Balbec and Palmyra are both named. Now, the columns and lighter parts of the temples at Balbec look very like architecture of the Roman time; while the massy substructures resemble works that are always said to be of Pelasgic origin. Again, the temples of Palmyra are of Roman taste; but the tombs and watercourses, like the works in Palestine ascribed to Solomon, are massy and durable.