Larger excavations than this are found in the island of Salsette; and similar works have been mentioned as numerous and extensive in several other places in India. About 25 miles from Madras, it is said, there exists remains of an enormous ancient town or city, spread over a valley, twelve miles in extent; a part of it being only visible at low water-where are seven monolith, or solid stone pagodas and a whole mountain of rock appears to have been cut up into temples, palaces, houses, groups of animals, and mythological figures.

6

All these, however, are understood to be excelled by the works at Elora, in the interior of Hindostan, where a mountain of granite, extending nearly a mile and a half, and of an amphitheatre form, is completely chiselled from top to bottom into temples and their various ornaments. These temples are said, by a recent traveller, to contain numerous chambers, one above the other, supported by galleries and rows of pillars, and surrounded with lofty obelisks, colossal figures, flights of steps, porticos, couches, balconies, canals, tanks and bridges, beautiful and grand beyond description or conception. A range of these structures, extending over a mile, includes more than twenty temples dedicated to one of the Hindoo gods. Drawings or paintings only can give us an adequate idea of their magnificence and splendor. Conceive,' says our traveller, 'the burst of surprise at suddenly coming upon a stupendous temple, 145 feet in length by 62 in breadth, and standing alone upon its native bed, rearing its rocky head nearly 100 feet high; detached from the neighboring mountain by a spacious area all around it, 250 feet deep by 150 feet broad, and having well formed door-ways, windows, and stair-cases to its upper floor. It contains large rooms of a smooth and polished surface, regularly divided by rows of pillars. Beyond the areas are handsome figure galleries, or virandas, supported by regular pillars, with compartments hewn out of the boundary scarp, containing curious gigantic figures of the Hindoo mythology; and above these again, are still more finely excavated, large rooms. The whole of these works cut from a mountain averaging 100 feet in height, he adds,' appear to have been excavated by the chisel.'

These wonderful remains have withstood the assaults of time, of revolution and barbarism, and still exist, models for human genius, and the mockery of modern power. Their vast dimensions and fine state of preservation, the hardness of the material from which they are excavated, and the perfect manner in which they are finished, ornamented with sculpture whose beauty is only equalled by the sublimity and grandeur of the magnificent whole, could not now be equalled by a concentration of all the skill and labor which any Asiatic prince could command. One who has recently visited them, concludes a minute description of them with the following remarks: At the time these astonishing works were begun, the country, far and wide, must have enjoyed a profound peace; its resources, too, must have been great; and the people happy and contented, to have labored unremittingly, during a series of years for purposes of Religion, in the completion of these vast temples. They probably had their origin among a race purely Hindoo; and long antecedent to the invasion by Alexander or Seleucus.' It may well be conjectured that such works as these could only have been achieved by the omnipotent influence of religious enthusiasm. This sentiment has ever been one of the most powerful stimulants to human effort; and it has probably done more to build up and demolish the various creations of human art, than any other influence which has ever operated on mankind. I can easily conceive, too, that this superstitious enthusiasm was often excited to the highest possible elevation among the idolators of ancient India and Egypt; and that their polytheism exerted a stronger tendency to excite its votaries to labor and sacrifices, than a pure theism in either the Patriarchal, the Jewish, the Christian, or Mahometan forms. But when we ask of the condition of the people, by whose labor and skill those structures were erected those temples excavated those pyramids piled up, we are directed to the grotesque figures and strange images with which they are adorned, and to the unintelligible hieroglyphics inscribed on their walls, as the only record from which to deduce even the date of their origin. In regard to these Hindostan temples, we are left entirely without data,

relative to the time, when, or the people by whom they were made; and owe to the ambiguous legends of the present degenerate inhabitants, and to the obvious design exhibited in their construction, the supposition that they were the creations of superstition and enthusiasm. But, confounded as we are in the contemplation of these remains, we may venture to assume that a people who could achieve such works as these, must have possessed intelligence, and enjoyed at least a competence; and that the religious enthusiasm which stimulated them to the effort, and encouraged them in its prosecution, must have been a very different influence from that of modern aristocracy or despotism.

If from Palestine, Phenecia, the Nile, and the East, we turn our eyes upon the classic hills and groves of lovely Greece; if, relying on the fidelity of the modern translator, and the English historian, we may recur to the period of freedom and glory in that land of arts, and science, and beauty, we shall find evidence abundant, that the eras of popular triumph have been, more than any other, consecrated to DISCOVERIES in science, and IMPROVEMENT in the arts.

The oldest traditionary memorials of Greece relate not to war and conquest, but to the invention or introduction of institutions and arts. The rigorous principles of Democracy which had always existed in the Grecian governments, the strong tinge of republican principles in the earliest constitution of their little states, which ultimately abolished every vestige of monarchy, and proscribed the very name of King,-all contributed to elicit those wonderful displays of talent, genius, and skill, which have in every subsequent age commanded the homage of mankind. Homer is considered as illustrating this early republicanism in his sketches of an age of which little other account remains. 'May you transmit to your children whatsoever honors the people hath given you,' was the benediction of Ulysses, on the hospitable Queen upon whose shores he had been cast by shipwreck. This personage is represented in his distress as a skilful boat-builder; and in the height of his opulence, making his own bedstead, and adorning it with gold, silver and ivory. It was at this period thought not unbecoming a

prince, to be a carpenter, and to supply his own wants or luxuries.' 'Superior personal qualities were always necessary to maintain even the possession of rank and wealth.' Astronomy was much cultivated in Homer's time- and Hesiod before him had written a treatise on husbandry. Handicraft arts had not yet become trades -but princes, (continues Mitford) exercised them for themselves.' And yet, at this early period there were Greeks who had houses of polished stone. 'Ornamental works in metals, and ivory, and in wood, were not uncommon: the art of gilding or plating silver with gold was already known.' The art of dying crimson, which became so highly esteemed in the subsequent times of luxury and refinement, among both Greeks and Romans, appears to have had its origin before Homer. We have in the Odyssey, says Mr. Mitford, the following list of presents to a lady :-'A tunic, large beautiful and variegated; twelve golden hooks were on it, nicely fitted to well-bent eyes; a golden necklace of elegant workmanmanship, set with amber and highly splendid; a pair of three-drop ear-rings exquisitely brilliant, and another ornament for the neck for which we want a name.' These Mr. Mitford supposes, were of Persian manufacture, as a merchant of that nation is described by Homer as 'offering to sell a golden necklace set with amber.' A silver bowl is described as excelling all that was ever seen. 'Sidonian artists made it, and Phenecians brought it over the sea.'

A veil from the store of the works of Sidonian women was selected by Hecuba as an acceptable offering to Minerva.' It was customary in the heroic age, as indeed at all times in Greece, for ladies of the highest rank to employ themselves in spinning and needle-work, and in, at least, directing the business of the loom, which was carried on for every family within itself. It was praise equally for a slave or a princess to be skilful in works of this kind. 'Washing, also, was employment for ladies.' 'A youth is described as elegant in his dress, and delicate in his person, such as the sons of princes usually are; yet, exclaims our astonished historian, 'It is remarkable that the youth thus described, was in the employment of a shepherd!'

But it was at a later period, when a 'commonwealth' was deem

sway,

ed the only Government to which it became men to submit; and when the term 'Tyrant' was introduced to designate those who, in opposition to these republican principles, acquired monarchical that the arts flourished most. It was about 465 years before Christ, that Athens became the principal resort of Philosophy and the Arts. At the head of the glorious confederacy, by whose arms the deliverance from Persian invasion had been achieved, this Capital of the Republic

began to draw everything towards herself as a common centre. Migrating from Egypt and the east, and thence to the western coast of Asia, and in Greece itself somewhat cherished and fostered by the Pesistratids; the arts and sciences were now revived and cultivated with a vigor before unknown. From this period down to the time of Alexander, before Greece fell a prey to this ambitious Macedonian, a skilful painter, architect or sculptor enjoyed the highest consideration, and the most flattering distinction. Posterity celebrated his name in festivals. A city valued itself as much on having produced a citizen who was famous for some mechanical talent, as for having given birth to a statesman, a philosopher or a general of distinguished merit. It was to this manner of thinking and acting, that Greece owed its pre-eminence and superiority in many branches of the arts, which she will probably always enjoy. 'It is,' says another author, 'when a people are roused out of a torpid state, as the Greeks had been by the Persian invasion, when some fortunate change in their circumstances like the triumph of her sons over those Asiatic hordes, enables them to contrast present prosperity with former abasement-that the mind receives a spring in every new pursuit ; and the progress of the arts among a people, seldom fails to be rapid.' Speaking of the age of Pericles, the period to which we have just referred, Mr. Mitford remarks, 'It is a wonderful and singular phenomenon in the history of mankind, too little accounted for by anything recorded by ancient or imagined by modern writers, that, during this period of turbulence, art, science, fine taste and politeness should have risen to that perfection, which has made Athens the mistress of the world, through all succeeding ages.'