Engraved stones of seals and rings are exceedingly valuable in enabling us to identify antique busts and statues; their hardness having preserved them from injury. Very frequently they give the impression of being most accurate portraits. In the Greek Court is a large collection of casts of these extremely interesting works, which merit careful examination. Many of the heads are wonderfully beautiful--far surpassing in execution any similar work of the present time. In like manner the portraits upon coins, being connected with writing, have been most useful in contributing to the knowledge and naming of antique busts and statues. Of these illustrations also, the visitor is enabled to study a very complete series from very early times. The universal taste for portraiture exhibited by the ancients, and the encouragement to art which the vast wealth of many enabled them to afford, soon led to the formation of a gallery of portraits in every house of importance. Such a gallery contained portraits, both sculptured and painted, of great men in art, science, letters, and arms, and was called “The _Pinacotheca_.” The desire to render such a collection as complete as possible, led to the production of an infinite number of copies from those originally taken from the life: just as with us, houses are adorned with plaster-casts of the busts of Wellington, Shakspeare, and Milton. It will now be understood how it has happened that so large a number of portrait-busts have remained to us from antiquity. Unless they had been multiplied in the manner described, the acts of ignorance and the accidents of time would have effaced all record of the features and aspect of the good and great in ancient story. Most of the works, executed in metal, were melted down and converted into money. One valuable mine, however, was happily discovered in the ruins of Herculaneum, completely preserved, and was removed to the Museum at Naples, where it still exists. Of several, so recovered, we possess fine copies in the Crystal Palace. During the reign of Hadrian in Rome (A.D. 120), art enjoyed a revival--a Medicean period. A multitude of works of every kind were produced, and portraiture was carried to its height through the very zealous loyalty to which sculptors gave way, in their desire to flatter their imperial and magnificent patron, by representing the members of his family as so many gods and goddesses. The like encouragement was afforded under the dominion of Antoninus Pius (A.D. 140), and his adopted son, Marcus Aurelius; followed, unfortunately, by the destructive propensities of the odious Commodus, who would have limited portraiture to the representation of his own face.