s mostly devoted to sacred
legends. Only in recent times have painting and sculpture become quite
separate and mainly secular. Only within these few centuries has
Painting been divided into historical, landscape, marine, architectural,
genre, animal, still-life, &c.; and Sculpture grown heterogeneous in
respect of the variety of real and ideal subjects with which it occupies
itself.

Strange as it seems then, we find that all forms of written language, of
Painting, and of Sculpture, have a common root in the politico-religious
decorations of ancient temples and palaces. Little resemblance as they
now have, the landscape that hangs against the wall, and the copy of the
_Times_ lying on the table, are remotely akin. The brazen face of the
knocker which the postman has just lifted, is related not only to the
woodcuts of the _Illustrated London News_ which he is delivering, but to
the characters of the _billet-doux_ which accompanies it. Between the
painted window, the prayer-book on which its light falls, and the
adjacent monument, there is consanguinity. The effigies on our coins,
the signs over shops, the coat of arms outside the carriage panel, and
the placards inside the omnibus, are, in common with dolls and
paper-hangings, lineally descended from the rude sculpture-paintings in
which ancient peoples represented the triumphs and worship of their
god-kings. Perhaps no example can be given which more vividly
illustrates the multiplicity and heterogeneity of the products that in
course of time may arise by successive differentiations from a common
stock.

Before passing to other classes of facts, it should be observed that the
evolution of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous is displayed not
only in the separation of Painting and Sculpture from Architecture and
from each other, and in the greater variety of subjects they embody, but
it is further shown in the structure of each work. A modern picture or
statue is of far more heterogeneous nature than an ancient one. An
Egyptian sculpture-fresco usually represents all its figures as at the
same distance from the eye; and so is less heterogeneous than a
painting that represents them as at various distances from the eye. It
exhibits all objects as exposed to the same degree of light; and so is
less heterogeneous than a painting which exhibits its different objects
and different parts of each object as in different degrees of light. It
uses chiefly the primary colours, a