MiiLLER'S MANUAL OF ANCIENT ART.

TEE volume before us is a true manual, in the highest sense of the word : it is as full of matter as an egg is full of meat, and for a cursory view of the whole subject—cursory, that is, on the reader's part—it suffices in itself; but furthermore it is a lucid index to authorities and specimens. The historian, the archaeologist, the artist, and the student of restbetics, will find in M. Miffier's book at once a great highway and a thoroughly- informed guide into the scattered and sometimes dim region of antiquity. The translator has done his work with conscientious painstaking, and with a masterly command of language.

To make our readers understand the sort of work that it is, we must describe its structure. It begins with an "Introduction," of seventeen pages, on the theory of art, with a compressed view of the literature on the subject. The body of the book is divided into two parts. The first is "the History of Art in Antiquity" ; which fills about half the volume. The history is mainly that of "the Greeks," among whom Romans are properly included, as merely the employers and imitators of the lower Greek artists ; but the Etruscans, Egyptians, Indians, and other ancient nations, are not omitted. The second portion of the book relates to "the Systematic Treatment of Ancient Art"; the products of art, not the his- tory, being now the subject. Of this part one division is on the "Geo- graphy of Ancient Art," glancing at the topography of remains and mu- scums: another on "Tectonics "—buildings and architecture, furniture, and utensils—considered with respect to their classification and purpose : a third on "Formative Art," in which works are considered with reference to their materials and methods of working; their form, design, and meaning; and their subjects—namely, mythological deities, portraits, illustrations of manners, and attributes. The text is more minutely divided into paragraphs or sections; to each of which is appended one or more notes—not foot-notes, but following on, only in smaller type ; so that the text may easily be read without the notes. The text forms a treatise, historical and expository; the notes contain ex- planatory observations, and are crammed with exact references to ancient and modern writings, authenticating facts in history, pointing out ex- tended researches on the technical parts of art, guiding the reader to architectural remains, ancient sculpture, medals, paintings, vases, &c. To the historian, M. Miller's book will be a manual in tracing the evi- dences not only of the plastic arts, but of personal and national customs ; to the artist, it is a guide in the study of his profession, its early growth, its models, and the influences under which it was developed or decayed ; to the resthetical philosopher, it is a guide for the study of the reciprocal influence which art had upon the manners and history of nations, and vice versci. The path which the writer pursued with the toil of a sur- veyor and pioneer is cleared and marked out for the student, who may now traverse it at a hand gallop.

But although it may truly be called a gigantic specimen of the guide-book, M. Mffiler's work is much more. The substantive treatise which threads the mass of references is admirable for the power with which, while the several sections of the subject are brought into one view, they are Bo massed as to stand out distinctly in their several relations : a spirit of inquiry, alike vigorous and refined, animates the investigation and brings out its moral results. As an example of this sort of moral exposition, we may cite the manner in which the author fetches out the share that art, considered jointly both as cause and effect, has had in the history of those two most remarkable nations of antiquity, the Greeks and Romans. The review is most instructive as well to those who are in search of the influences which tend to develop art for art's sake, as for those who seek in art an agent of social advancement.

The nature of Greek art, viewed as it were in the abstract, is curious for the union of perfection with deficiency. The physical and the intel- lectual were the great aims of the Greek people—the head and the muscu- lar frame were the objects of their cultivation : that class of feelings which we represent by "the heart" played a subordinate part, and was rather deemed to be divided between the two. This moral peculiarity reappears in their art : there is perfection of physical form, a thorough expression of animal propensities or intellectual faculties : but it was re- served for the Christian mra to introduce sentiment into art; and when the Greeks had degenerated both in material and intellectual power, they bequeathed to the middle ages a strange, empty, staid form of mechanical grace. Complete then in its physical development, instinct with the fire of intellect, Greek art is thus far perfect: but its very perfection makes more obvious and marvellous the extent to which it is imperfect in other respects, limited in its circle of ideas by the exclusion of all affections beyond the instincts. It is unenlightened by love; a word which we here use in its most exalted sense to mean the feeling which makes the happiness of one being depend on the happiness of another, and seek to complete itself by winning a recognition of its devotion. Greek art has no emotion, but the rudest and simplest; Greek painting has no arial perspective, no landscape. Greek art develops personal grace—is the exemplar of individual energy, but it is all a magnificent type of self-reference : it is nnwarmed by the precept "love thy neighbour as thyself"; the relation of self to another self is absent; the very grace of grouping is mechanical ; the countenance is ab- stracted, individualized : the thrill of harmony which is created by the

mutual dependence of two chords is unfelt. The exceptions which seem to contradict this rule do not come within it : the devotion of friend- ship was a duty rather than an enjoyment—the price of a pleasure. The glimpses of sentiment which occur in the design or expression of ancient works belong to an age of its degeneracy. They serve less to show that sentiment had established a footing in sculpture and painting among the ancients, than to prove the innate force of feelings which made some little way through the exclusive force of customs and intellectual dogmas of art.

Within their limits, however, the Greeks were truly an artistic people: art shed its light upon their habitual actions and ideas : it was not only present as an ornament, but it influenced their demeanour, fashioned their costume, and animated their intercourse : the Greek worship of art was a genuine devotion, and its history is the history of the nation, its politics and fortunes. The Persian wars," says M. Milner, "awakened in Greece the slumbering con- sciousness of national power. Athens was entirely fitted, by the character of the race to which its inhabitants belonged, to become the central point of Grecian civilization; and availed itself, with great skill, of the means which the circum- stances supplied; whereby it quickly arrived at such a degree of power as no other city ever possessed. • • * " While in these works of architecture a spirit of art was unfolded which COM- bined grace with majesty in the happiest manner, the plastic art, emancipated by means of the free and lively spirit of democratic Athens from all the fetters of antique stiffness, and penetrated by the powerful and magnificent genius of the age of Pericles, attained through Phidias the same culminating point. However, in conformity with the character of the elder Hellenians, the admired master- pieces of that time still bore the impress of calm dignity and unimpassioned tranquillity of said. The spirit of Athenian art boon acquired the sway through- out Greece, although art was also cultivated in the Peloponnesus in great per- fection especially among the Democratic and industrious Argives. "The Peloponnesian war, from 01. 87, 1 ex. to 93, 4, destroyed in the first place the wealth of Athens, the expenses of the war having exceeded the amount of revenue, and at the same time tore asunder the bond which united the Athenian school with the Peloponnesian and other artists. Of deeper influence was the internal change which occurred during the Peloponnesian war, not without con- siderable cooperation from the great pestilence (01. 87, 3) which swept away the manly race of the old Athenians, and left a worse behind. Sensuality and passion on the one hand, and a sophistical cultivation of the understanding and language on the other, took the place of the solid manner of thinking, guided by sure feelings, which was a characteristic of earlier times. The Grecian people broke down the bulwarks of ancient national principles, and, as in public life so also in all the arts, the pursuit of enjoyment and the desire for more violent mental excitement pressed more prominently into view."

The Romans, at once a coarser and less acute people, admired art, but felt its influence only in a secondary degree. Their imperfect sense had its natural consequence in imperfect faith : they betrayed art, by turning it to a mere engine, and it punished them by sliding from their hold. This result is a most strikingly instructive evidence of the fact, that however we may be conscious of the collateral and ulterior benefits derivable from art, we must cultivate it for its own sake, with single-minded and com- plete devotion : if we attempt to court it with some reserved purpose, it will not be won.

"As the whole history of civilized mankind, (with the exception of India,) so also was the history of art now concentrated at Rome; but merely through the

political supremacy, not on account of the artistic talents of the Romans. The Romans, although on one side intimately allied to the Greeks, were yet as a whole of coarser, less finely organized materials. Their mind was always directed to those external relations of men with one another, by which their activity in gene- ral is conditioned and determined (practical life); at first more to those which concern the community (politics); then, _when freedom had outlived itself, to those of individals with one another (private life), especially such as arose between them

with reference to external possessions! To preserve, increase, and protect the res familiaris, was nowhere so much as here regarded as a duty. The careless, un- embarrassed, and playful freedom of mind which, heedlessly abandoning itself to internal impulses, gives birth to the arts, was a stranger to the Romans; even re- ligion, in Greece the mother of art, was among them designedly practical, not only

in its earlier form, as an emanation of Etruscan discipline, but also in its later, when the deification of etbico-political notions prevailed. This practical tendency, however, was among the Romans combined with a taste for magnificence which

despised doing things by halves or in a paltry style, which satisfied every ne- cessity of life in a complete and comprehensive manner by great undertakings, and thereby upheld architecture at least among the arts. "The character of the Roman world in reference to art, throughout this period, can be best understood if viewed in four stages. I. From the Conquest of Co- rinth to Augustus. The endeavours of the great to impose, and to gam the people by

the magnificence of triumphs, and games of unprecedented splendour, drew artists and works of art to Rome. In individuals there was awakened a genuine taste for art, for the most part indeed united with great luxury, like the love for art of the Macedonian princes. The charm of these enjoyments was only enhanced in pri- vate life by the resistance of a party who cherished old Roman predilections, al- though in public life these had apparently the ascendancy. Hence Rome was a rallying point for Greek artists, among whom there were many of great excellence who vied with the ancients; artistic science and connoisseurship here fixed their seat.

"Ii. The time of the Julii and the Flavii, 723 to 84 A. U. (96 A. 13.). Pnt- dent princes, by means of magnificent undertakings which even procured to the common people extraordinary comforts and enjoyments, brought the Romans into entire oblivion of political life; half insane successors, by the gigantic schemes of their folly, gave still ample occupation to the arts.j. Although art even in such times must have been for removed from the truth and simplicity of the best ages of Greece, still, however, it everywhere manifested during this century spirit and energy: the decline of taste is yet scarcely observable. " IIL From Nerve to the so-called Triginta Tyranni, 96 to about 260 years after Christ. Long-continued peace in the Roman empire ; splendid undertakings even in the provinces; a transitory revival of art in Greece itself through Hadrian; magnificent erections in the East. With all this zealous and widely-extended exercise of art, the want of internal spirit and life is shown more and more dis- tinctly from the time of the Antonioes downwards, along with the striving after external show; vapidity and inflation combined, as in oratory and literature. The force of the spirit of Greco-Roman culture was broken by the inroad of foreign ideas; the general want of satisfaction with the hereditary religions, the blending together of heterogeneous superstitions must have been in many ways pernicious to art. The circumstance that a Syrian sacerdotal family occupied for a while the • " compare on this point," says the author in a note, "(a principal cause of the great perfection of the civil law) Hugo's History of Law, eleventh ed. p. 76. Juvenal xlv. shows how avaritia was Inoculated in the young as good husbandry. Horace often places the econoutico-practical education of the Romans In contrast with the more ideal culture of the Greeks. Omnibus, dila hominlbusque, formoslor vidctur masse mut, quam quidquld ApeUes, Phidiasque, oneeull deltrantes, fecerunt. Patron. 88." The saying of Augustus, that be would leave the city marmorea which he had re- ceived Iota-RM. Nero's burning and rebuilding.

Roman throne had considerable influence. Syria and Asia Minor were at that time the most flourishing provinces; and an Asiatic character emanating from thence is clearly observable in the arts of design as well as in literature. "IV. From the Triginta Tyranni to the Byzantine times. The ancient world declined, and with it art. The old Roman patriotism lost, through political changes and the powerlessness of the empire, the hold which the rule of the Gemara had still left it. The living faith in the gods of heathendom disappeared; attempts to preserve it only gave general ideas for personal substances. At the same time was altogether lost the manner of viewing things to which art is in- debted for its existence—the warm and living conception of external nature, the in- timate union of corporeal forms with the spirit. A dead system of forms smothered the movements of freer vital power; the arts themselves were taken into the ser- vice of a tasteless half Oriental court parade. Before the axe was laid externally to the root of the tree, the vital sap was already dried up within."

Art will only abide with those who cultivate it in a thorough faith,— those who feel that art exercises some of the highest faculties of our na- ture, which can in no other way find adequate exercise ; who believe that the exercise of those faculties is good in itself and sufficient to itself; and, faithful to that belief, cultivate art for its own sake, and not for some collateral or ulterior purpose. We insist on this faith, because we believe it to have been essentially the animating spirit of all great schools of art. With the Greeks it occupied so high a place, that among them it may be considered to have been the substitute for sentiment ; to which the Italians made it the handmaid. With the rise of other ideas in Europe, art de- generated. Mere political objects first engaged the attention of feudal or ultra-military governments,—the happiness of life flying to sensual enjoyments ; then mere knowledge assumed the sway, and prolonged its exclusive reign by becoming the helpmate of the Democratic element which popularized power through municipal institutions; the rise of the humbler classes into notice and influence has strengthened the utilitarian turn to which knowledge has been directed. But as that want is be- coming satisfied, the activity of the human mind passes on to other objects ; the forgotten duties of art are remembered, and the most utili- tarian country in the world, England, exhibits a decided reaction. There remain, however, many influences hostile to a restoration of art amongst us the very tendency to take it up it in an utilitarian spirit, as an en- gine for divers ulterior purposes, will obstruct the redevelopment; and still more notably will it be impeded by those customs and national habits of mind which tend to suppress not only the external signs but the very existence of passion. From that stage, we are fain to believe, we are passing into one of a more complete and generous faith ; one in which. without being unconscious of the moral and even utilitarian influences of art, we may yet cultivate it for its own sake as a substantive element in the satisfaction of human activity. The very publication of works like that before us is evidence that such a disposition is reviving after the apathy of centuries : M. Miller's book, eminently practical and exact in its handling of materials, animated by a spirit of enlarged and refined apprehension, opening with a treatise on theory, that, however brief and perhaps incomplete, is pregnant with reflection, must contribute power- fully to strengthen the new principle of vitality. We have reason to hope that the great progress is perceptible, although it may be reserved for a future generation to reattain that stage to which the Italians were exalted when they made art the handmaid of sentiment. It is not, indeed, impossible to carry the progress still higher. The Greeks united art with political science to compose the philosophy of human conduct; the Italians united art with sentiment: it still remains for the world to re- cognize, and for the first time to conjoin in any completeness, the three elements of human advancement—political science, the doctrine of love, and art.