society; and however imperfectly
he may succeed in representing the objects themselves, his attempts to
indicate their relative position, and to embody the expression of his
own ideas, are a source of the highest satisfaction.

As the wish to record events gave the first, religion gave the second
impulse to sculpture. The simple pillar of wood or stone, which was
originally chosen to represent the deity, afterwards assumed the human
form, the noblest image of the power that created it; though the
_Hermae_ of Greece were not, as some have thought, the origin of
statues, but were borrowed from the mummy-shaped gods of Egypt.

Pausanias thinks that "all statues were in ancient times of wood,
particularly those made in Egypt;" but this must have been at a period
so remote as to be far beyond the known history of that country;
though it is probable that when the arts were in their infancy the
Egyptians were confined to statues of that kind; and they occasionally
erected wooden figures in their temples, even till the times of the
latter Pharaohs.

Long after men had attempted to make out the parts of the figure,
statues continued to be very rude; the arms were placed directly down
the side of the thighs, and the legs were united together; nor did
they pass beyond this imperfect state in Greece, until the age of
Daedalus. Fortunately for themselves and for the world, the Greeks were
allowed to free themselves from old habits, while the Egyptians, at
the latest periods, continued to follow the imperfect models of their
early artists, and were forever prevented from arriving at excellence
in sculpture; and though they made great progress in other branches of
art, though they evinced considerable taste in the forms of their
vases, their furniture, and even in some architectural details, they
were forever deficient in ideal beauty, and in the mode of
representing the natural positions of the human figure.

In Egypt the prescribed automaton character of the figures effectually
prevented all advancement in the statuary's art; the limbs being
straight, without any attempt at action, or, indeed, any indication of
life; they were really _statues_ of the person they represented, not
the person "living in marble," in which they differed entirely from
those of Greece. No statue of a warrior was sculptured in the varied
attitudes of attack and defence; no wrestler, no _discobolus_, no
pugilist exhibited the grace, the vigor, or the mus