ARCHITECTURE, SCULPTURE, PAINTING.

500-430 B.C.

My object in the present lecture is not a criticism of the principles of art so much as an enumeration of its various forms among the ancients, to show that in this department of civilization they reached remarkable perfection, and were not inferior to modern Christian nations.

The first development of art among all the nations of antiquity was in architecture.  The earliest buildings erected were houses to protect people from heat, cold, and the fury of the elements of Nature.  At that remote period much more attention was given to convenience and practical utility than to beauty or architectural effect.  The earliest houses were built of wood, and stone was not employed until temples and palaces arose.  Ordinary houses were probably not much better than log-huts and hovels, until wealth was accumulated by private persons.

The earliest monuments of enduring magnificence were the temples of powerful priests and the palaces of kings; and in Egypt and Assyria these appear earliest, as well as most other works showing civilization.  Perhaps the first great monument which arose after the deluge of Noah was the Tower of Babel, built probably of brick.  It was intended to be very lofty, but of its actual height we know nothing, nor of its style of architecture.  Indeed, we do not know that it was ever advanced beyond its foundations; yet there are some grounds for supposing that it was ultimately finished, and became the principal temple of the Chaldaean metropolis.

From the ruins of ancient monuments we conclude that architecture received its earliest development in Egypt, and that its effects were imposing, massive, and grand.  It was chiefly directed to the erection of palaces and temples, the ruins of which attest grandeur and vastness.  They were built of stone, in blocks so huge and heavy that even modern engineers are at loss to comprehend how they could have been transported and erected.  All the monuments of the Pharaohs are wonders, especially such as appear in the ruins of Karnak,—­a temple formerly designated as that of Jupiter Ammon.  It was in the time of Sesostris, or Rameses the Great, the first of the Pharaohs of the nineteenth dynasty, that architecture in Egypt reached its greatest development.  Then we find the rectangular-cut blocks of stone in parallel courses, the heavy pier, the cylindrical column with its bell-shaped capital, and the bold and massive rectangular architraves extending from pier to pier and column to column, surmounted by a deep covered coping or cornice.