This lofty aim of poetry and art among the Greeks was not pursued far by the Romans, who contented themselves. with a practical and realistic view of fine art and made their Emperor the highest ideal to which they rose. Hence Roman sculpture to a great extent employed itself in deifying men. The influence of the Christian faith at a later time gradually raised this old grovelling Roman materialism; but sculpture among the Romans never soared high, and painting took the place of sculpture in spiritualising art. Thus there has been no great Christian sculptor to compare with the great Christian painters, and the chief development of the Christian influence on art, besides painting, has been in the great cathedral architecture which has elevated and enlarged human thought in so many of the great cities of Europe. The characteristic tone of materialism which we see pervading all ancient. Roman work, is diametrically opposed to this spiritual and upward tendency expressed by Gothic architecture, and we are therefore prepared to find Roman art and poetry deadening the elevated tone of Christianity for many centuries (see pp. 12 and 14).

We cannot therefore_look with much hope to the study of Roman literature and art as lifting us into the highest regions of the beautiful in poetry or in architecture or sculpture. But it may be possible, by taking a different

point of view, to shew that there are some advantages in gaining a historical and wide survey of the subject.

Some practical purposes are not recognized enough in the study of literary and artistic history. How frequently do we hear it asked, of what use the study of Greek and Latin history and language can be to those who are intended for the practical business of life. Yet it cannot be denied that the study of antiquity moulds and enlightens the human intellect in a manner which sometimes guards it from making serious and deadly blunders. And we are thus able to give to the unbelievers in the study of antiquity a reply which they are not able to dispute. In the case immediately before us it will be at once allowed that the British nation has a practical and undeniable interest. When we once see that the circumstances under which Englishmen are now led to carry out great works both in literature and in art resemble those which developed and modified Roman energy, then we cannot help feeling a great interest and value in the study of this branch of Roman history.

In

The leading trait of Roman life was austerity, which they named severitas. This is, it is true, only partially present in the British character and in a modified manner. Rome it gave birth to an original form in literature, namely, Satire, veins of which run through most of the earlier

Roman poetical productions, and shew themselves widely in Roman portrait sculpture. Every one will recognize the same national feature in the school of English satirical poetry. An allied development, that of caricature, though it does not occupy so large a space as did satire among the Romans, appears very distinctly in British national art. Another Roman characteristic, which gives a tone to Roman poetry and art is also prominent in English art namely, extreme realism or materialism, or, as it is colloquially termed, a tendency to matter of fact. Both nations Roman and British have shewn in their poetry and art an admiration for the strictly historical rather than the legendary and mythical, and have combined these two features of art in a mode seldom found elsewhere. The mythical predominates over the historical far more in Greek than in Roman art. Compare for instance the Æginetan or the Gjolbaschi groups with those in the triumphal arch reliefs. From this realism also resulted in some measure that admiration for technical skill and finish which crippled Roman, and endangers British art.

But when we consider the external circumstances which modified Roman, as they are still modifying English literature and art, more striking resemblances between the consequent national productions will be at once discerned. A vast empire has been expanded by the heroic determina

tion of the British nation and by their liberal readiness to share and improve rather than to rule despotically over those portions of the earth in which they have made themselves superior to all others. But a similarly wide imperial power produced an overbearing national conceit in the Romans. It has been happily modified in the English nation to a national pride, but its effects have been felt in the conglomerate and confused features of English, as they were in those of Roman art, and it is in this direction that the simplicity of the Greek models is so correctively useful. And we must not forget the other natural consequence of imperial sway, the wealth which it places in the hands of powerful men.

This produces admiration of technical skill, colossal production, and expensive outlay, which had a powerful influence on Roman, as it also has had on British art. We can make these three-national pride, confused conglomeration, and technical degradation, our compartments in which to arrange the effects of empire upon the Romans. No reader of Pliny or of the Roman satirists will be ignorant of their severe remarks upon all these tendencies; and few of the present generation of Britons can forget the criticism and caricature which have been launched at the coarse exaggeration of the Iron Duke, or the golden memorial of the Prince Consort. An iron statue of Hercules was made,