Painting has her direct claims to be received as authority for past events and records, and in illustration may be cited the Life and History of the SAVIOUR. The pictorial art alone was for centuries the only record whereby the mass of the people could read that Sacred Life. The cross upon the banners, shields, and pennons of the Crusaders, spoke to the Christian heart, even above the din of arms or the yell of battle. When the Latin was the general tongue of prayer and preaching, the pictorial art sprung into life with redoubled power; and from the painting above the altar, representing the Crucifixion, the people learned that Christ suffered,--it alone reached the heart and understanding, while the Latin language reached only the ears of the unlettered. Has not the Life of the Redeemer been traced through every event by the painter's magic art? The Annunciation, Nativity, Disputation in the Temple, Healing the Sick and the Blind, Last Supper and Sacrament, Rejection by Pilate, Crucifixion, and the Resurrection and Transfiguration, are the pictorial Volumes of our religion. Angelo, De Vinci, Raphael, Murillo, Rubens, and West, were as essentially historians of sacred events,--as Plutarch, Livy, Tacitus, Gibbon, Hume, and Robertson, were those of a national and political character. Painting has traced upon the galleries of Versailles the chief events of the French kingdom--of the Empire and its glory. And in the present day, the new walls of England's Parliament are to be decorated with her deeds of chivalry--sacred to her historic and undying fame! The walls of the American capital contain the imperishable history of Washington, and the Freedom of the Western Hemisphere! Paintings then will not be rejected as evidences of events, or of religious and national records. SECTION III. COINS AND MEDALS. These are admitted species of historic evidence, and as lasting ones, perhaps, beyond all others. A series of them is the most certain method of arranging a chronological tablet, and thereby preserving the data of history, mythology, portraits, customs, and art.