The anatomy and philosophy of expression as connected with the fine arts / by Sir Charles Bell.

  • Bell, Charles, Sir, 1774-1842.
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The anatomy and philosophy of expression as connected with the fine arts / by Sir Charles Bell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    cruelty, and blood. The history of Greece is the record of incessant wars, of towns sacked, and of citizens inhumanly massacred. And in Athens war was always justified, if it promised advantage ; when tried by misfortune, she was found wanting: during pestilence, every affection was blunted ; and licentiousness abounded to such a degree, that the people became brutalized. It is strange that AVinc- kelman should attribute so much to the influence of climate, seeing that where the olive still ripens, in the long summer of Greece, not a vestige of those virtues which were the ad- miration of the world now exists : and centuries have passed without a poet or philosopher appearing, in the country of Homer and Plato. In the soil and climate of Italy, there have existed together states of society the most dissimilar. Among the Etruscans, and in the cities of Central Italy, the arts and civilization of Egypt and Phoenicia had taken root, long before Eome* * A more just estimate is now made, than formerly, of the early Eomans, and of the virtues of the surrounding tribes. (Dr. Arnold's Histoiy of Eome.) The remains discovered in the .tombs of Tarquinii, Tuscania, Argyllaj, Veii, and Clusium, leave no doubt of the high advancement of art in these cities, centuries before the foundation of Eome—at least of its fabled rise under Eomnlus. These cities were the adversaries of the early Eomans ; and, though subdued, furnished to tlieir masters the elements of government and of civil policy. Eome had conquered the surrounding states, and sought to blot out all memory of them ; when new settlements of Greeks (giving name to the district of Magna GrJBcia) again offered to her a more extended field of enterprise, in which the arts of peace were once more subjugated under her iron sway. If I did not believe that Providence rules in the marcli of nations, I should say, that the world would have advanced in philosophy, literature, and art, more rapidly but for that stern, remorseless people, obstinate against instruction. We are biassed in favour of Eome from her language containing the only record of much that, but for her conquests, would have spread with earlier, and happier influence, over the Western world.