it in Northern Europe, where theories take upon themselves to explain to the mind what the eye has not yet learnt, as if a grammar could be written before the language is understood.

Drawing was always a principal point in ancient art. The Greeks made it their great study, knowing how it improved the accuracy of the eye and the management of the hand, as well as the perception of the beautiful; and the most extraordinary correctness must have been acquired to enable Apelles to draw the line within that of Protogenes.

The neglect that drawing has experienced in England is now, we may hope, in a fair way of being remedied; for to many a real line has been almost unknown; and while the French have persevered so successfully in drawing, we have seldom been alive to its importance; occasionally excusing ourselves from the trouble by some such subterfuge as, "there is no outline in nature." How often indeed is a line made up of a few dotted strokes; and many a youth, as yet unacquainted with the proper use of a pencil, thinks that the brush will at once enable him to acquire excellence in art!

Of the quality of the pencils used by the Egyptians for drawing and painting, it is difficult to form any opinion. Those generally employed for writing were a reed or rush, many of which have been found with the tablets or inkstands belonging to the scribes ; and with these, too, they probably sketched the figures in red and black upon the stone or stucco of the walls. To put in the colour, we may suppose that brushes of some kind were used; but the minute scale on which the painters are represented in the sculptures prevents our deciding the question.

Habits among men of similar occupations are frequently alike, even in the most distant countries; and we find it was not unusual for an Egyptian artist, or scribe, to put his reed pencil behind his ear, when engaged in examining the effect of his painting, or listening to a person on business, like a clerk in the counting-house of an European town.

Painters and scribes deposited their writing implements in a box with a pendent leather top, which was tied up with a loop or thong; and a handle or strap was fastened to the side, to enable

them to carry it more conveniently. Their ordinary wooden inkstand was furnished with two or more cavities for holding the colours, and a tube in the centre for the pens or reeds; and

d

a

445. A scribe writing on a tablet. c and d are two cases for carrying writing materials.

Thebes

446. Scribe with his inkstand upon the table. One pen is put behind his ear, and he is writing with another. Thebes.

certain memoranda were frequently written at the back of it, when a large piece of papyrus, or the wooden slab, was not at hand. An idle moment was often occupied in making rough sketches on a piece of stone or on some other common material; and subjects of greater size were drawn in a happy mood of fancy, upon a papyrus: for the Egyptians (as I have already said) were addicted to caricature, and some papyri in the British and other museums show that even religious subjects were not exempt from it; and one in the Turin collection presents a severe libel on the taste and conduct of women.

Of painting, apart from sculpture, and of the excellence to

which it attained in Egypt, we can form no accurate opinion, nothing having come down to us of a Pharaonic period, or of that epoch when the arts were at their zenith in Egypt; but that, already, in the time of Osirtasen, they painted on panel, is shown by one of the subjects at Beni Hassan, where two artists are engaged in a picture representing a calf, and an antelope overtaken by a dog. The painter holds his brush in one hand, and

his palette or saucer of colour in the other; but, though the boards stand upright, there is no indication of a contrivance to steady or support the hand. The Greeks drew and painted in the same manner without that help.

Mention is made of an Egyptian painting by Herodotus, who tells us that Amasis sent a portrait of himself to Cyrene, probably on wood, and in profile; for the full face is rarely represented either in their paintings, or bas-reliefs. The faces of the kings in the tombs and temples of Egypt are unquestionably portraits; but they are always in profile; and the only ones in full face are on wood, and of late time. Two of these are preserved in the British Museum, but they are evidently Greek, and date, perhaps, even after the conquest of Egypt by the Romans. It is therefore vain to speculate on the nature of their painting, or their skill in this branch of art; and, though some of the portraits taken from the mummies may prove that encaustic painting with wax and naphtha was adopted in Egypt, the time when it was

first known there is uncertain, nor can we conclude from a specimen of Greek time, that the same was practised in a Pharaonic age.

Fresco painting was entirely unknown in Egypt; and the figures on walls were always drawn and painted after the stucco was quite dry. But they sometimes coated the colours with a transparent varnish, which was also done by the Greeks; and the wax said by the younger Pliny to have been used for this purpose, on the painted exterior of a house at Stabia, may have been a substitute for the usual varnish; which last would have been far more durable under a hot Italian sun.

Pliny states, in his chapter on inventions, that "Gyges, a Lydian, was the earliest painter in Egypt; and Euchir, a cousin of Daedalus according to Aristotle, the first in Greece; or, as Theophrastus thinks, Polygnotus the Athenian." But the painting represented in Beni Hassan evidently dates before any of those artists. Pliny, in another place, says, "the origin of painting is uncertain: the Egyptians pretend that it was invented by them 6000 years before it passed into Greece; a vain boast, as every one will allow." It must, however, be admitted, that all the arts (however imperfect) were cultivated in Egypt long before Greece existed as a nation; and the remark he afterwards makes, that painting was unknown at the period of the Trojan war, can only be applied to the Greeks; as is shown by the same unquestionable authority at Beni Hassan, dating about 900 years before the time usually assigned to the taking of Troy.

It is probable that the artists, in Egypt, who painted on wood, were in higher estimation than mere decorators; as was the case in Greece, where "no artists were in repute but those who executed pictures on wood, for neither Ludius nor any other wall painter was of any renown." The Greeks preferred moveable pictures, which could be taken away in case of fire, or sold if necessary; and as Pliny says, "there was no painting on the walls of Apelles' house" (or "no painting by Apelles on the walls of a house"). The painting and decoration of buildings was another and an inferior branch of art. The pictures were put up in temples, as the works of great masters in later times in churches; but they were

not dedications, nor solely connected with sacred subjects; and the temple was selected as the place of security, as it often was as a repository of treasure. They had also picture galleries in some secure place; as in the Acropolis of Athens.

Outline figures on walls were in all countries the earliest style of painting; they were in the oldest temples of Latium; and in Egypt they preceded the more elaborate style, that was afterwards followed by bas-relief and intaglio. In Greece, during the middle period, which was that of the best art, pictures were painted on wood, by the first artists; and Raoul-Rochette thinks that if any of them painted on walls, this was accidental; and the finest pictures being on wood were in after times carried off to Rome. This removal was lamented by the Greeks “ as a spoliation"; which having left the walls bare accounts for Pausanias saying so little about pictures in Greece. Historical compositions were of course the highest branch of art; though many of the greatest Greek artists, who seem to have excelled in all styles, often treated inferior subjects; and some (as in later times) combined the two highest arts of sculpture and painting.

In the infancy of art figures were represented in profile; but afterwards they were rare in Greece; and art could not reach any degree of excellence until figures in a composition had ceased to be in profile; and it was only in order to conceal the loss of an eye that Apelles gave one side of the face, in his portrait of Antigonus.

The oldest paintings were also, as Pliny admits, monochrome, or painted of one uniform colour; like those of Egypt; and indeed statues in Greece were at first of one colour, doubtless red like those of the Egyptians, Romans, and Etruscans. For not only bas-reliefs were painted, which as parts of a coloured building was a necessity, but statues also; and as art advanced they were made to resemble real life. For that statue by Scopas, of a Bacchante, with a disembowelled fawn, whose cadaverous hue contrasted with the rest, at once shows that it was painted, and not of a monochrome colour; and the statues of Praxiteles, painted for him by Nicias, would not have been preferred by that sculptor to his other works, if they had merely been stained red.