Guided by these preliminaries we now approach that happy coast, where, from an arbitrary hieroglyph, the palliative of ignorance, from a tool of despotism, or a ponderous monument of eternal sleep, art emerged into life, motion, and liberty; where situation, climate, national character, religion, manners and government conspired to raise it on that permanent basis, which after the ruins of the fabric itself, still subsists and bids defiance to the ravages of time; as uniform in the principle as various in its applications, the art of the Greeks possessed in itself and propagated, like its chief object Man, the germs of immortality. I shall not detail here the reasons and the coincidence of fortunate circumstances which raised the Greeks to be the arbiters of form.[4] The standard they erected, the cannon they framed, fell not from Heaven: but as they fancied themselves of divine origin, and _Religion_ was the first mover of their art, it followed that they should endeavour to invest their authors with the most perfect form; and as Man possesses that exclusively, they were led to a complete and intellectual study of its elements and constitution; this, with their _climate_, which allowed that form to grow, and to show itself to the greatest advantage; with their _civil_ and _political_ institutions, which established and encouraged exercises and manners best calculated to develope its powers; and above all that simplicity of their end, that uniformity of pursuit which in all its derivations retraced the great principle from which it sprang, and like a central stamen drew it out into one immense connected web of congenial imitation; these, I say, are the reasons why the Greeks carried the art to a height which no subsequent time or race has been able to rival or even to approach. Great as these advantages were, it is not to be supposed that Nature deviated from her gradual progress in the developement of human faculties, in favour of the Greeks. Greek Art had her infancy, but the Graces rocked the cradle, and Love taught her to speak. If ever legend deserved our belief, the amorous tale of the Corinthian maid, who traced the shade of her departing lover by the secret lamp, appeals to our sympathy, to grant it; and leads us at the same time to some observations on the first mechanical essays of Painting, and that _linear method_ which, though passed nearly unnoticed by _Winkelmann_, seems to have continued as the basis of execution, even when the instrument for which it was chiefly adapted had long been laid aside. The etymology of the word used by the Greeks to express _Painting_ being the same with that which they employ for _Writing_, makes the similarity of tool, materials, method, almost certain. The tool was a style or pen of wood or metal; the materials a board, or a levigated plane of wood, metal, stone, or some prepared compound; the method, letters or lines.