We are not so certain in regard to the excellence of the ancients in the art of painting as we are in reference to sculpture and architecture, since so few specimens have been preserved. We have only the testimony of the ancients themselves; and as they had so severe a taste and so great susceptibility to beauty in all its forms, we cannot suppose that their notions were crude in this great art which the moderns have carried to so great perfection. In this art the moderns may be superior, especially in perspective and drawing, and light and shade. No age, we fancy, can surpass Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when the genius of Raphael, Correggio, and Domenichino blazed with such wonderful brilliancy. Nevertheless, we read of celebrated schools among the ancients, all of which recognized _form_ as the great principle and basis of the art, even like the moderns. The schools of Sicyon, Corinth, Athens, and Rhodes were indebted for their renown, like those of Bologna, Florence, and Rome, to their strict observance of this fundamental law. [Sidenote: Antiquity of painting.] [Sidenote: Painting among the Egyptians.] Painting, in some form, is very ancient, though not so ancient as the temples of the gods and the statues which were erected to their worship. It arose with the susceptibility to beauty of form and color, and with the view of conveying thoughts and emotions of the soul by imitation. The walls of Babylon were painted after Nature with different species of animals and combats. Semiramis was represented on horseback, striking a leopard with a dart, and her husband Ninus wounding a lion. Ezekiel (viii. 10) represents various idols and beasts portrayed upon the walls, and even princes, painted in vermilion, with girdles around their loins (xxiii. 14, 15). In ages almost fabulous there were some rude attempts in this art, which probably arose from the coloring of statues and reliefs. The wooden chests of Egyptian mummies are painted and written with religious subjects, but the colors were laid without regard to light and shade. The Egyptians did not seek to represent the passions and emotions which agitate the soul, but rather to authenticate events and actions; and hence their paintings, like hieroglyphics, are inscriptions. It was their great festivals and religious rites which they sought to perpetuate, not ideas of beauty or grace. Hence their paintings abound with dismembered animals, plants, and flowers, censers, entrails,--whatever was used in their religious worship. In Greece, also, the original painting consisted in coloring statues and reliefs of wood and clay. At Corinth, painting was early united with the fabrication of vases, on which were rudely painted figures of men and animals. Among the Etruscans, before Rome was founded, it is said there were beautiful paintings, and it is probable they were advanced in art before the Greeks. There were paintings in some of the old Etruscan