In Sculpture, Pliny and Cicero are the most noted critics.  There is a fine article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica on this subject.  In Smith’s Dictionary are the Lives and works of the most noted masters.  Mueller’s Ancient Art alludes to the leading masterpieces.  Montfaucon’s Antiquite Expliquee en Figures; Specimens of Ancient Sculpture, by the Society of Dilettanti, London, 1809; Ancient Marbles of the British Museum, by Taylor Combe; Millin, Introduction a l’Etude des Monuments Antiques; Monuments Inedits d’Antiquite figuree, recuellis et publies par Raoul-Rochette; Gerhard’s Archaeologische Zeitung; David’s Essai sur le Classement Chronologique des Sculpteurs Grecs les plus celebres.

In Painting, see Mueller’s Ancient Art; Fuseli’s Lectures; Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Lectures; Lanzi’s History of Painting in Italy (translated by Roscoe); and the Article on “Painting,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, and Article “Pictura,” Smith’s Dictionary, both of which last mentioned refer to numerous German, French, and other authorities, should the reader care to pursue the subject.  Vitruvius (on Architecture, translated by Gwilt) writes at some length on ancient wall-paintings.  The finest specimens of ancient paintings are found in catacombs, the baths, and the ruins of Pompeii.  On this subject Winckelmann is the great authority.

ANCIENT SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE.

ASTRONOMY, GEOGRAPHY, ETC.

2000-100 B.C.

It would be absurd to claim for the ancients any great attainments in science, such as they made in the field of letters or the realm of art.  It is in science, especially when applied to practical life, that the moderns show their great superiority to the most enlightened nations of antiquity.  In this great department of human inquiry modern genius shines with the lustre of the sun.  It is this which most strikingly attests the advance of civilization.  It is this which has distinguished and elevated the races of Europe, and carried them in the line of progress beyond the attainments of the Greeks and Romans.  With the magnificent discoveries and inventions of the last three hundred years in almost every department of science, especially in the explorations of distant seas and continents, in the analysis of chemical compounds, in the wonders of steam and electricity, in mechanical appliances to abridge human labor, in astronomical researches, in the explanation of the phenomena of the heavens, in the miracles which inventive genius has wrought,—­seen in our ships, our manufactories, our printing-presses, our observatories, our fortifications, our laboratories, our mills, our machines to cultivate the earth, to make our clothes, to build our houses, to multiply our means of offence and defence, to make weak children do the work of Titans, to measure our time with the accuracy of the planetary orbits, to use the sun itself in perpetuating our likenesses