sense, includes all representation not only of human beings, but also of visible objects in nature. Now it is hardly necessary to insist on the interest cither of Historical art or of Portraiture as archaeological evidence.
Historical art can never be as trustworthy a document as written history; its narrative power is far more limited;—but how much it illustrates written history, how much it supplies where written history is wanting, or is yet undeciphered?
The bas-reliefs of Egypt and Assyria are the supplement to the hieroglyphic, or cuneiform text; the type of the Roman coin completes the historical record of its legend; the legend explains the type; the combination presents to us some passage in the public life of the emperor of the day.
Inscribed Historical art is at all times the simplest and most popular mode of teaching history; perhaps in such a state of society as that of Egypt or Assyria, the only mode.
Again, when Historical art is presented to us completely detached from the written text, and where the composed history of a period is ever so ample,—who would not use the illustration offered by Historical art?—who would reject such a record as the spiral frieze on the column of Trajan, and the bas-reliefs on the triumphal arches of the Roman empire? Who would not think the narrative of Herodotus, vivid and circumstantial as it is, would acquire fresh interest could we see that picture of Darius setting out on his Scythian expedition, which Mandrocles caused to be painted?—or the representation of Marathon with which Micon and Panænus adorned the Athenian Stoa Poicile?
If Historical art contribute to the fuller illustration of composed history, still more does Portraiture. If the very idea of the great dramatis personæ, who have successively appeared on the stage of universal history, stirs our hearts within us, who would not wish to see their bodily likeness?—who would not acknowledge that the statues and busts of the Cæsars are the marginal illustration of the text of Tacitus? that the history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, rich as it is in every kind of document, is incomplete without the portraits by Vandyke and Reynolds?—or, to pass from the portraits of individuals to the general portraiture of society, can we form a just idea of Greek and Roman manners with- out the pictures on vases and the pictures of Pompeii? or of medieval manners without the illuminations of manuscripts?
