So extensive are the inferences that may fairly be derived from these existing remains, that, as to some ancient nations, we know far more from this source, than is to be gathered from the entire evidence of written history: this, at least, is certain, that what is thus learned, if it be in some respects vague, possesses more of the substantial quality of knowledge, and much better deserves to be called history than do those bare catalogues of the names of kings, which are often dignified with the term. A name, or twenty names, unconnected with general facts—or a date, serving only to bring a mere name into its proper place in a chronological chart, may indeed impart the semblance of history, but it affords almost nothing of the substance. What we gather, for example, from written history, relative to the Assyrian empire, or to the early kingdoms of Greece, is much less significant than are the historical inferences relative to the people of Egypt, which are fairly deducible from the remains of their architecture.
The existing monuments of art, which are available as sources of historical information, are, 1. buildings and public works; 2. sculptures and gems; 3. inscriptions and coins; 4. paintings, mosaics, and vases; and 5. implements and arms.
For the purpose of confirming, or correcting, or illustrating, the assertions of historians on particular points, recourse must most often be had to the evidence of inscriptions and coins; and every one knows that from these sources all the leading facts of Greek and Roman history may be authenticated. The latter are especially important, both on account of the information they convey, and of the mode of its transmission to modern times. No one could call in question the utility of inscriptions for the illustration of history: but the student who cannot devote his undivided attention to the subject, or who has not access to the fullest and best sources of information, may very probably waste his time upon documents that he will afterwards discover to be extremely fallacious. In no department of antiquarian learning have misrepresentations, deceptions, and errors of inadvertency more abounded. Authors who were long regarded as unexceptionable authorities are found to deserve little confidence, and on such points a writer who is not worthy of great confidence, is worthy of none.
Coins are concise public records. The device they bear is seldom devoid of some significant allusion to the peculiar pretensions of the realm or city; the image, corresponding in form and expression with sculptures or descriptions, fixes the identity of the personage; and the legend furnishes names, and other specific notices. Coins, therefore, concentrate several kinds of evidence; and, like books, by their multitude, by their wide diffusion, and by the mode of their conservation to modern times, they are, with very few and unimportant exceptions, placed far beyond the reach of fraud or deception. The cabinets of the opulent, in all countries, are filled with series of these historical records; and the spade is every day turning up counterparts to those already known. Statues and buildings have been discovered here and there; but coins are the produce of every soil which civilization has at any time visited.
Sculptures are either historical or poetical; those of the first kind yield a confirmation to history which, though indefinite, is worthy of attention. That the principal personages whose names occur in history were represented by the artists of their times, is not only probable, but is a well-known fact. Statues or busts of the most distinguished public persons were given to the world by several artists, and they were placed in all the principal cities of the republic or the empire, that claimed any reflection of their glory. The principle of competition among artists would secure some tolerable uniformity—the uniformity of resemblance to the originals, among these statues and busts; nor do we at all pass the bounds of probability in supposing them to be, in general, real and good portraits. There is, besides, in most of them, an air of individuality, which at once convinces the practised eye of their authenticity.
So much as this being assumed, the congruity of these forms with the character of the men, as it is presented on the page of history, carries with it a proof of the truth of those records which few observers of the human physiognomy will feel disposed to question. In order to perceive the force of this kind of evidence it is not necessary to call for the aid of any system of physiognomical science (so called); every one’s intuitive discernment will suffice for the purpose. Let the simplest observer of faces and forms, who has read the history of Greece and Rome, look round a gallery of antique statues and busts; and he will be in little danger of misnaming the heads of Themistocles and of Alexander, of Plato and of Cicero, of Phocion and of Alcibiades, of Demosthenes and of Euclid, of Julius Cæsar and of Nero. To those whose eye is exercised in the discrimination of forms, the best executed of these antique heads speak their own biography with a distinctness that gives irresistible attestation to the accounts of historians.
Mythological or poetical sculptures afford inferences of a more general kind; most of which are suggested also by an examination of the temples of which they were the furniture. The exquisite forms of the Grecian chisel declare that the superstition they embodied, although it was frivolous and licentious, was framed more for pleasure than for fear;—that it was rather poetical than metaphysical. They do indicate certainly that the religious system of the people was not sanguinary or ferocious; and that it was not fitted to be the engine of priestly despotism. One would imagine that the ministers of these deities were more the servants of the people’s amusements, than the tyrants of their consciences, their property, and their persons.
The Grecian sculptures give proof that the superstition to which they belonged, however false or absurd it might be, was open to all the ameliorations and embellishments of a highly refined literature. In contrast with these are the sacred sculptures of India, which disgust us as undisguised and significant representatives of the horrid vices enjoined and practised by the priests. But the lettered taste of the Greeks taught their artists to invest each attribute of evil with some form of beauty. The hideousness of the vindictive passions must be hid beneath the character of tranquil power; and the loathsomeness of the sensual passions must be veiled by the perfect ideal of loveliness. Art, left to itself, does not adopt these corrections; nor do the authors of superstitious systems ask for them. There must be poetry, there must be philosophy at hand, to whisper cautions to the wantonness of art, and to confine its exuberances within the limits of propriety.
When the remains of ancient structures are examined for the purpose of collecting thence historical information, they must be viewed under three distinct aspects; namely—the resources that were required for their construction—the purposes to which they were devoted, and the taste which they display. A few instances will show the nature, and the extent of the inferences that may fairly be drawn from such an examination.
The remains of Egyptian architecture have long outlasted the fame of the men whose names they were charged to transmit to distant times. Or if some few names have been handed down by historians, or have been drawn from their hieroglyphical concealments by the genius of modern research, the whole amount of such discoveries may be comprised in a few lines, and it falls very far short of conveying anything like a history of the people. But some general facts relative to the wealth, the commerce, the industry, the institutions, the manners, and the superstitions of the Egyptians, have been reported by historians; and the descriptions of that country and of its people, given by Herodotus, Strabo, Diodorus, and Plutarch, confirmed as they are by incidental allusions in other writers, and especially by a few significant expressions occurring in the Jewish Scriptures, afford a tolerably complete idea of this, the most extraordinary of all nations—ancient or modern. Now this testimony of the historians is corroborated, with a peculiar distinctness, by those ruins which still lead hosts of travellers to the banks of the Nile.