hour or two; but there must have
been a vast deal of secret machinery, and influence, and agitation,
to keep up his name with the people. The followers of Pythagoras, in
another country, we know, said he had a golden leg, and this satisfied
the people that his philosophy was divine. Truly were they the dark ages
before the invention of newspapers. Besides, what became of literature
when the poet's voice in the public bath, or library, where he recited,
was drowned by the din of arms?...

What would we not give for a newspaper of the days of Homer, with
personal recollections of the contractors and commanders in the siege of
Troy; a reminiscence of Helen; the unedited fragments of Nestor; or a
traditional saying of Ulysses, who may be supposed too wise to have
published? What such a passage of literature would be to us, the journal
of to-day may be to some long distant age, when it is disentombed from
the crumbling corner-stone of some Astor House, Exchange, or Trinity
Church, on the deserted shore of an island, once New York. What
matters of curiosity would be poured fourth for the attention of the
inquisitive; how many learned theories which had sprung up in the
interim, put to rest; what anxiety moralists would be under to know the
number of churches, the bookseller's advertisements, and the convictions
at the Sessions! Some might be supposed to sigh over our lack of
improvement, the infant state of the arts, and our ineffectual attempts
at electro-magnetism, while others would dwell upon the old times when
Broadway was gayer with life, and the world got along better, than it
has ever done since.

* * * * *

=_Horace Binney Wallace,[55] 1817-1852._=

From "Art, Scenery, and Philosophy in Europe."

=_230._= ART AN EMANATION OF RELIGIOUS AFFECTION.

The spirit, conscious of an emotion of reverence for some unseen subject
of its own apprehension, desires to substantiate and fix its deity, and
to bring the senses into the same adoring attitude; and this can be done
only by setting before them a material representation of the divine.
This is illustrated in the universal and inveterate tendency of early
nations to idolatry....

How and why was it that the sculpture of the Greeks attained a character
so exalted that it shines on through our time, with a beam of glory
peculiar and inextinguishable? When we enter the chambers of the
Vatican, we are presently struck with the mystic infl