In conformity with these views, it has appeared, that the first attempts at sculptural or pictorial representation were dedicated to piety, and to the social affections of the heart. In like manner, the earliest and rudest erections of architecture now existing, as well as the most perfect and magnificent, are temples to the Deity, or memorials of the dead. There is, in these respects, indeed, a striking proof of the existence of this law of mind,--not of mere instinct, and, at the same time, of self-denial, in favor of the generous and the holy in man's nature. Not only do we find, that, wherever the human foot has been stayed, there is the altar, the temple, and the tomb; but we meet these amid the destitution of every approach to that luxury to which the arts have been ascribed; and, finally, we discover a vast disproportion between the efforts dedicated to these tributes of gratitude and affection, and those directed to personal comfort or splendor. Jacob, while yet a wanderer in tents, consecrated, by a pillar,--the first monument on record,--the spot where reposed his beloved Rachael. Over the whole of the inhabited globe, not excepting the dark heaths of our native land, are the last resting-places of the dead, which must have required a union of care and labour given only to a duty, everywhere held inviolably sacred. Even in the wilds of the New World, there are sepulchres of like laborious structure, to which, with a steadiness surer than that of the needle, the distant tribe tracks its way though pathless woods. Compare, again, the evidence of congregated energy, and even science, in the Druidical temples only, with the glimpses we possess of the accommodations of common life. The religious edifices of Egypt even yet fill the mind with admiration; while the probable monuments of their dead, faithless, indeed, to their individual trust, shall only sink amid the ruins of the world, enduring testimonies of the power of religion and of futurity over the mind of man, and of the vain attempt to convert that power into an instrument of selfish aggrandisement. From all this, something better may be deduced than even refuting the idea, that the sublimest objects of taste indicate, in their origin, a grovelling necessity, and, in their progress, owe their most graceful improvements to an idle luxury. In this inseparable union of the primitive arts of taste with feelings of religious service and of human affection, we perceive that man, even in a state of natural darkness, is not the selfish, the irreligious being, represented by a cold and material philosophy, equally the enemy of taste as of religion.