process analogous
to that of creation. The surface of the earth was first clothed
with vegetation, from the lowly moss and creeping lichen to the
lofty cedar, whose solemn branches mingle with the floating clouds.
When the earth was ready for their habitation, came the animals,
gifted with higher life, with spontaneous motion, with instinct and
sensibility. At last came man, endowed with the incomparable
faculties of love and reason.

'The art temple has also its vegetation. Its walls are covered with
varied plants, which wind along its cornices and wreathe its
plinths; they blossom round the oriels, brightening or deepening in
the light; they twine through the nerves of the vaulted arch; like
the liane of the cedars, they embrace the tall minarets of the
heaven-seeking spire, mounting into the blue depths of ether; they
bind the clustering shafts of the columns in heavy sheaves, and
crown their capitals with flowers and foliage. The stone grows more
and more animated, puts forth in more luxuriant growth; multitudes
of new forms spring up in the bosom of this magnificent creation;
when lo! at length man completes and embodies them all--his own
noble image stands revealed--the rude, but white and glittering
stone glows almost into life under the passion of his forming hand.

'Sculpture is but an immediate development of architecture,
proceeding naturally and organically from it. In proof of this, we
have only to examine it in its first efforts. Forms, unfinished and
embryonic, at first closely attached to the stone, growing by
degrees in accordance with their own fixed laws until able to
detach themselves from the medium through which they were
originated, after having acquired the conditions necessary for
their individual life, spring to actual life, to independent life,
almost as the organized being springs from the womb of its mother.

'Sculpture, however, represents but imperfectly the marvellous
glories of God's creation. It can give but faint ideas of the
various effects of light and shade, the constantly shifting play of
colors; it cannot offer that full harmony of beauty which nature is
ever spreading before us in the complicated scenes of life. To
satisfy this want, a new art is created! Closely linked with all
those which have prece