creation transpired under the transmuting and glorifying influence of impassioned thought. Supremacy in art among that people was not an accidental inspiration of a few artists, but the predominant spirit of the age and great heritage of a race. Their language was the first organ of speech thoroughly eliminated, and art, its correlative, was the highest material medium of mind. The mystery of the human form was accurately conceived by the Hellenic genius, and thus the mythological Sphinx, whose motto is Man, which had ever been inaccessible to the race of Shem, was by Japhetic intellect clearly revealed. In her most glorious days, the sumptuous temples of Athens, amid the elaborate graces of their moldings, the living foliage of their capitals, and the multiform friezes whereon Lapithæ and Centaurs exhibited the most impressive action, did yet preserve the same outline of simplicity with which the wooden hut of Pelasgus was marked. In consequence of the excitement, surprise, joy, and glory of their first conquest over the Persians, the Greeks developed all their energies, and the brief period of their highest excellence terminated soon after the final triumph over that great foe, so inseparable is national enthusiasm from exalted perfection in art. The Parthenon and Propylæa were trophies of Marathon and Salamis, monuments of past success, and pledges of future progress. Then supreme homage was paid to superior talent; and popular admiration, as profound as it was general, gave birth to those masterly productions its paintings deserved. The same combination of boldness and gentleness which constitutes the very essence of classic literature, imparted its peculiar expression to the plastic art of Greece. Both, in their best days, were equally imbued with that lofty impulse which antique traditions excited, and the national genius was most ambitious to perpetuate. The Persians brought marble with them, intending to erect a memorial of the anticipated victory, which their conquerors appropriated, and commissioned Phidias to cut it into a statue of Nemesis. Such was the destiny of all oriental elements, and the use made of them by the valiant genius of occidental republicans. When the first great battle of opinion had been won, and the Persian, like the Mede, was overthrown, a few years of active freedom produced more of civilizing art, than had been generated under the pressure of whole centuries of despotic repose.