hand,
traditional and acquired, as it is among the Chinese. They were cunning
workmen in metals, in jewelry, in engravings, in enamel, in glass, in
porcelain, and in pottery. Their fine linen and embroidery were famous.
For their chariots Solomon gave 600 shekels of silver; and they
fashioned into a hundred articles of luxury the ivory of Africa, the
mahogany of India, and the cedar of Lebanon. As no specimens remain of
their domestic architecture, it is supposed rather than ascertained that
their houses were of a single story with a terraced roof. The rooms of
great men at least were richly and elegantly painted, and furnished with
tables, chairs, and couches, which have supplied models for the
upholstery of modern times.

"Architecture is the most material of the arts. It was the art in which
the Egyptians most excelled. They seem to have understood in some degree
the grandeur which results from proportion and arrangement, as well as
that which results from size. The profuse and elaborate sculpture with
which their temples are covered, does not mar their majesty. Their
heaviness is relieved by the glowing sun and the deep sky. But the
impression produced must always have been that of cost and power rather
than of art. Some changes of style are noticed. The golden age was that
of the Pharaohs of the 19th dynasty, when the power and greatness of the
nation were at the highest. More florid and less majestic forms mark the
era of the Ptolemies. But in this respect, as in others, the Egyptians
seem to have maintained their stationary character, and the remains of
Meroe, which are now known to be among the latest, have been taken for
the earliest of all the monuments.

"In sculpture the summit of manual skill was reached. But religion, the
mistress and tyrant of Egyptian art, prescribed for the images of the
gods her unalterable and often hideous forms, and the rules of an
hereditary craft, which fixed certain proportions for each part of the
statue, and gave the execution of the several parts to several workmen,
laid another chain on the genius of the artist. Painting seems not to
have advanced beyond the barbarous excellence of brilliant colors.
Drawing and design were monstrous, and the laws of perspective and even
of vision unknown or disregarded. Of music, we learn from Plato that it
was restricted to certain established tunes of approved moral tendency,
and the wayward Athenian thought all restraint wholesome as he s