Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/44

 periods, and the paragraphs which are devoted to Etruria and the East. To this historical epitome succeed the theoretical chapters.

He takes antique art as a whole, and studies its constitution, the materials and processes which it employs, the conditions under which it works, the characteristics which it gives to form, the subjects of which it treats, and the partition of its remains over the whole territory occupied by ancient civilization. Greece, in her best days, gave most of its care to the representation of those beings, superior to humanity and yet clothed with human forms, in which her glowing imagination personified the forces and eternal laws of nature and of the moral world; it was in striving to create these types, and to endow them with outward features worthy of their majesty, that Grecian art produced its noblest and most ideal works. It will, therefore, be seen that a comprehensive manual had to include a history of those gods and heroes which, with that of their statues, formed a whole mythology of art; and this mythology occupies the larger portion of the second part of the work.

This plan has been often criticised, but we need here make no attempt to repel or even to discuss the objections which have been brought against it.

It has doubtless the inconvenience of leading to frequent repetition; monuments which have been necessarily described and estimated in the historical division are again mentioned in the chapters which treat of theory; but a better plan has yet to be found, one which will enable us to avoid such repetitions without any important sacrifice. The chief thing in a work of the kind is to be clear and complete, merits which the Handbuch possesses in the highest degree. Things are easily found in it, and, by a powerful effort of criticism, the author has succeeded in classifying and condensing into a single convenient volume, all the interesting discoveries of several generations of archæologists. Not that it is a mere compilation, for previous writers were far from being unanimous as to the dates and significance of the remains which they had described, and it was necessary to choose between their different hypotheses, and sometimes to reject them all. In such cases Müller shows great judgment, and very often the opinion to which he finally commits himself had been previously unknown. Without entering into any long discussion he sustains it