The infancy of Greek art was the infancy of a Hercules, who strangled serpents in his cradle. However superior as to intrinsic worth, it must be acknowledged to be an offspring of Egypt. As we have seen in western literature, a kind of hereditary lineage connects it with the East, and this is attested by evidence too palpable to be denied. Native elements appear to have combined with foreign art in Assyria; but Nimroud and Karsabad prove that the style of that intermediate region, at a certain period of its development, was directly derived from the valley of the Nile. The Assyrian types of art furnished Lydia and Caria, probably, with improved elements, from whom the Asiatic Greeks obtained the means of advancing toward that high excellence which the most refined race was destined to achieve. The earliest proofs of their skill come to us on coins, and that the Lydians were the first on earth to excel in that kind of work, Homer distinctly asserts. But while an Asiatic origin must be assigned to all the arts of Greece, it should not be forgotten that the Hellenic organization alone perfected each and every department with that exquisite refinement which no other people has ever been able to attain. Their wonderful originality is indicated by the fact, that their very earliest coins, possess in their embryo state, the germs of that beauty and sublimity which afterward were realized by the greatest artists in their grandest works. In the smallest seal, as in the most colossal form, the charming simplicity and repose prevail, which forever mark the leading traits of the Attic mind. Coins made of gold in Asia, preceded the silver coinage of Athens, but even in this earliest imprint of archaic skill, we see rudely executed all that which subsequently characterized those groups of Centaurs and Amazons that enriched the metopes and pediments of the Parthenon. When compared with Indian and Egyptian remains, the Persian column must be considered as presenting an approximation to the perfect form, and yet it lacks that purity of taste, that refined and chastened intellect, which distinguishes the works of Greece. The lotus and palm, were indeed imitated at Carnak and Persepolis, but Athens saw the acanthus and honeysuckle surmount shafts of manly strength with amarynths of beauty such as the East never knew. India excavated the cell, and Egypt quarried the column; then came Greece to perfect the entablature system, and add that crowning glory, the triangular pediment. The three orders in their succession, exhausted every realm of invention, and perfected structural types unsurpassed by human powers; and while the mechanical principles remained identified with the most unadorned Cyclopean gateway, or rudest cromlech, an exquisite system of ornament embraced every feature, and refined all into consummate dignity and elegance.