evident Phoenician origin of the fable of the Minotaur added to the very conformation of this mythological being, derived from the same oriental source, makes it impossible to avoid recognising their character and acknowledging their testimony. Other constructions, which these same fables attribute to Dædalus, also bear the same impress. Thus Diodorus Siculus affirms that in his time, there existed in Sardinia many considerable works, which were supposed to be works of Dædalus, and at the present day the attention of the learned world has been called to those sepulchral constructions of Sardinia which appear to belong to periods of primitive civilisation, and, according to all appearance, present oriental forms such as have been found in certain tombs of Pæstum, or that of the Curiatii at Albano, and in the Etruscan traditions of the tomb of Porsenna, built over a labyrinth. There are in all these connecting facts, analogies which cannot be denied, nor explained otherwise than by some real communication, which took place at a period certainly very remote, and probably through the means of commerce between Attica and the countries mentioned, by the means of a national school of artists, the whole represented in the person of Dædalus. This established, there is nothing contradictory in supposing that at this period, and in this school, there may have arisen a man endowed with some peculiar talents, or thrown into some extraordinary enterprises, such as are almost always to be met with at those periods of crisis, when the human mind begins to ferment, and that this man, seizing at that period the direction of art, received its name, and at a later period has been considered as its living expression, as its very personification: in a word, who was called Dædalus, because he may have been confounded with, or because he may have concentred, and, so to speak, absorbed in himself the contemporaneous inventions of several artists, the successive works of several generations, as it almost always happens in the case of those eminent men who form in themselves alone a whole school, a whole age, as would happen, for example, in the case of Raphael, if all the traditions of his time should happen some day to be lost, we should thus be no longer able to distinguish the works of his hands, from the influence of his genius, and should be obliged to confound in his fame, that of his pupils, to refer all to his glory-in a word, to consider in him alone his entire school. There exist, with regard to Dædalus, some other more precise facts, and which

concern more essentially the history of art. I would speak of a great number of statues which were attributed to him, and which were in existence in different parts of Greece at the time of Pausanias, in the second century of our era. Thus, there are mentioned two Hercules by his hand, one of which was naked, at Corinth, and the other at Thebes, a Minerva at Cnossus, a Venus at Delos, and some other statues, the enumeration of which, more or less subject to philological difficulties, would be superfluous here.

These statues were of wood; this has been expressly said of some, and probably may be said of all. But what is far more important to consider than the material, in these works of primitive art, is the genius, and the character stamped on them, and the nature itself of the representation. Now the peculiar character of all those Dædalean figures, is, that they had the arms isolated from the body, the legs also detached, with the eyes open; that is to say, they had the appearance of nature, as well as that of life, consequently a beginning of action, and a principle of imitation. This then is an important progress in the practice of the art, which was attached to this name, or to the school of Dædalus; and as this name is Greek, and this school is Attic, and this progress is in itself foreign to the Egyptian system, we here obtain the point of divergence at which Greek art, as yet in its cradle, separates itself from Egyptian art, never again to meet. These are facts, which I consider as established, and which deserve to take a place at the head of the history of art. I shall now mention some others which are connected with it, and which cannot indeed lay claim to the same importance. In some passages of Greek authors, certain movable figures of wood are mentioned which were set in motion by the means of quicksilver, with which the interior of these figures was filled, and which were attributed to the ancient Dædalus. It seems that they were of ebony, and they were employed in the festivals of Bacchus to produce certain pantomimic effects; they were therefore kinds of puppets, or automata, provided with some mechanism inside, by the means of which they were made to execute all kinds of grotesque movements and fantastic attitudes.

Aristotle mentions one of these movable figures of wood, which was a Venus; and a very curious passage of Plato proves that these kinds of figures must have been very common. He compares those floating opinions, which have no stedfast

hold in the mind of man, and those which true science has fixed there, to those figures of Dedalus some of which always in motion, because they wanted the spring made to stop them, were of little value, others, more precious, and more beautiful, had the power of remaining immovable. Plato adds, perhaps you have not seen those figures, or you have them not at your house? Surely it would be absurd to suppose, that puppets of this kind were the works of the ancient Dædalus. But what seems necessarily to result from the fact mentioned by Plato, and from the name of figures of Daedalus given to those automata, is that the idea of motion produced for the first time by the works of Dædalus and of his school, had been identified with the very name of the artist to such a degree, that in the popular language this name remained attached to those movable figures, which were in such common use, and were of the rudest contrivance. A more weighty and more important testimony in every respect has been also handed down to us, with regard to the style of the figures executed by the real Dædalus or in his school. Pausanias, who had the opportunity of examining a great number, could form a just idea of their character, writes these remarkable words; there is in all those works of Dædalus something repulsive to the eye, yet nevertheless something also divine. This is exactly the effect which all those statues of an ancient style produce, such as those of Egypt, which present, precisely because they possess nothing, or almost nothing, which partakes of imitation, and because the design is entirely destitute of details, something grand and colossal which strikes, imposes, and which is suited to an idol, at the same time that it is distasteful to the beholder, and repugnant to our taste. This observation of Pausanias, full of penetration and depth, gives therefore by tokens which are familiar to us the character of primitive Greek sculpture, and this character consisted in a certain monumental treatment, in great unobtrusiveness of details such as are to be found in the works of Egyptian art, united with some effects of imitation, some attempt at movement, which proved that the artist, whoever he may have been, had already cast his eyes on nature.

Such was then, that ancient school of Dædalus, of which we can form a more complete idea, by comparing the scattered hints of it, which have been handed down to us, with the first paintings of the revival of the arts, in which already the Byzantine type of the Christian paintings modified by a

beginning of truth, strikes and is distasteful to us at one and the same time, from that antique style, which has something religious about it, with all its imperfections, and which presents something solemn, in spite of the total absence of imitation, in a word, a sacred character resulting from the religion which employed it, from the antiquity the impress of which it bears, and from the very imperfection of the art from which it proceeds.

EIGHTH LECTURE.

Continuation of the same subject-Family of Artists, called Dædalides, in the same manner as the families of poets and physicians called Homerides and Esclepiades-Ancient schools of Greek Art-Eginetan schoolGeneral observations on the character of that ancient school-Digression on the paintings of the period of the revival of arts, and in particular in those of the Campo Santo of Pisa compared with the productions of the Ancient Greek School-Of Bularchus, the most ancient Greek painter mentioned in history-Of the more ancient monuments of Greek ArtMedals importance of the study of Numismatics with regard to the history of Art-Greek Vases: general observations on this class of Archæological Monuments-Of the Chest of Cypselus-Conclusion.

I HAVE endeavoured to give an idea of Greek art, under its first form, and in its most ancient school, without however disguising aught that was uncertain or fabulous in this period of the history of art. This was, to speak correctly, the mythological part, and it is rather a spirit of curiosity than any real wish for instruction which leads us to examine those traditions, more or less vague of a period of art, monuments of which are entirely wanting. For the period which immediately followed, we find ourselves equally destitute of precise information, equally deficient in original monuments. I have already spoken of the great gap which Grecian history presents from the return of the Heracleida, to the beginning of the Olympiads, a gap which no one hitherto has been able to fill up, nor even to explain satisfactorily. The arts doubtless found themselves involved in the same causes which checked, during all this long period, the development of Greek genius, or at least the information relative to their history, has been involved in the same shipwreck in which all the other arts and sciences were swallowed up for I acknowledge, that it is difficult to believe that, stormy and agitated as the condition of Greece was in general, during the course of those five or six centuries civilisation remained constantly stationary there, and it even seems to me, contrary to the nature of things that where society is perpetually agitated, where governments change, where the laws vary from one generation to another, the human mind