to improve until it culminated in Lysippus, who was contemporaneous with Alexander.  He is said to have executed fifteen hundred statues, and to have displayed great energy of execution.  He idealized human beauty, and imitated Nature to the minutest details.  He alone was selected to make the statue of Alexander, which is lost.  None of his works, which were chiefly in bronze, are extant; but it is supposed that the famous Hercules and the Torso Belvedere are copies from his works, since his favorite subject was Hercules.  We only can judge of his great merits from his transcendent reputation and the criticism of classic writers, and also from the works that have come down to us which are supposed to be imitations of his masterpieces.  It was his scholars who sculptured the Colossus of Rhodes, the Laocooen, and the Dying Gladiator.  After him plastic art rapidly degenerated, since it appealed to passion, especially under Praxiteles, who was famous for his undraped Venuses and the expression of sensual charms.  The decline of Art was rapid as men became rich, and Epicurean life was sought as the highest good.  Skill of execution did not decline, but ideal beauty was lost sight of, until the art itself was prostituted—­as among the Romans—­to please perverted tastes or to flatter senatorial pride.

But our present theme is not the history of decline, but of the original creations of genius, which have been copied in every succeeding age, and which probably will never be surpassed, except in some inferior respects,—­in mere mechanical skill.  The Olympian Jove of Phidias lives perhaps in the Moses of Michael Angelo, great as was his original genius, even as the Venus of Praxiteles may have been reproduced in Powers’s Greek Slave.  The great masters had innumerable imitators, not merely in the representation of man but of animals.  What a study did these artists excite, especially in their own age, and how honorable did they make their noble profession even in degenerate times!  They were the school-masters of thousands and tens of thousands, perpetuating their ideas to remotest generations.  Their instructions were not lost, and never can be lost in a realm which constitutes one of the proudest features of our own civilization.  It is true that Christianity does not teach aesthetic culture, but it teaches the duties which prevent the eclipse of Art.  In this way it comes to the rescue of Art when in danger of being perverted.  Grecian Art was consecrated to Paganism,—­but, revived, it may indirectly be made tributary to Christianity, like music and eloquence.  It will not conserve Christianity, but may be purified by it, even if able to flourish without it.

I can now only glance at the third development of Grecian Art, as seen in painting.