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sculptures now found in the great museums of Europe are believed to have been copies of the great master pieces of this master age of art. The third period, t h a t of the "Graceful Style," culminated in Praxiteles, who lived in the fourth century B. C. Despairing to excel the majesty and grandeur of his predecessors, lie sought distinction in producing the beautiful and graceful. Among the names in this period we find those of Lysippus and Scopas. Lysippus was the favorite of Alexander the Great and his school is sometimes called the Historical, from the number of statues and busts of great men which it produced. Among the statuary of this period which has come down to us in well-preserved copies, are usually counted the Faun and the Cupid of Praxiteles, the Apollino di Medici, the Psyche of Naples, the Venus di Medici and many other fragments of statues whose nude and sensuous beauty marks the period from which they came. The fourth, or later Grecian period, was that of ihe Laoeoon, which is supposed to have been made in the third century B. C , and was the joint work of Agesander, of Rhodes, and his two sons, Polydorus and Alhenodorus. The characteristic of this period was the expression of human passion in its moments of greatest agony and intensity. The Fighting Gladiator and the Dying Gladiator are by some counted as belonging to this period, and also the body of Hercules, known as the Torso Belvidere. Sculture, though practiced throughout Greece, had its recognized centers where distinct schools seem to have existed. Among tiicse, the most celebrated are those of Rhodes, Sicyon, Aegina, Argos and Athens. The number of statues was immense. It is said that four of these cities possessed twelve thousand each. The fifth period may be called the Graaco-Boman period. The fall of Greece and the transportation of great numbers of its chief works of art to Rome attracted thither also, Greek artists, and under the early Emperors there was a revival of art, of which we have some remains in statues of the Emperors, and among the latest the statues and busts of Antinous, the unfortunate favorite of Hadrian. From the time of the Antonines in the second century A. D., sculpture rapidly declined, and many of its great master-pieces were destroyed by the barbarians and by the early christians, whose hate of idolatry was stronger than their love of art. With the revival of learning in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a new era of sculpture began in Italy, counting among its names those of Niccola Pisano and his son Giovanni Ghiberti, Donatello, Brunnelleschi Lucca della Robbia, and Anally, the great name of Michael Angelo Buonarotti The greatest names which have appeared in sculpture since Michael Angelo are those of Canova,who died in 1822,and the Dane Thorwalsden, who died in 1S44. Of less fame are the French sculptors Goujon, GHrardon, Falcourct, Houdon and Chaudet; the German Rauchmueller, Schadow, Darmecker, Tieck, Rauch and Scbwanthaler, and the English, Flaxman, Ohantrey, Westmacott, Gibson and Bailey. The most noted American names are those of Greenough, Crawford, Powers, Randolph,

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Rogers, Palmer, Storey, Thomas Ball, J. J . Hart, Harriet Hosmer and John Rogers. From Italy .sculpture spread into France, Germany, England ; though Rome and Florence still continue the great centers of this art. Fine art schools have sprung up in several of the principal cities of Europe, and the art spirit is evidently increasing again in the world, and in no country perhaps, more rapidly than in our own. PAINTING. Of the painting of the ancients we only know through the writers of antiquity, all specimens of their work having unfortunately been destroyed by the ravages of time, except a few fragments of frescoes in excavated ruins and tombs. That the art of painting reached a very high state of perfection we may infer from the fact that the names of Apelles, Zeuxes and Polygnotus, as Painters, were held in as high estimation as those of Phidias, l'olycletus and Praxiteles, as Sculptors, by Greek and Roman Authors. The earliest traces of this art are found in Egypt, and consists in simple outline forms filled in with clear colors, no attempts being made at perspective or blending of light and shade. Specimens of this primitive style are still preserved in the painted shrouds and cases for mummies. Among the Greeks the history of painting is divided into epochs, cotemporary with the periods of Sculpture. After the time of Apelles, in whose works the culminating point of Grecian excellence was attained, the art of painting gradually declined, and among the Romans no great artists were found. When Constantino embraced Christianity in 312 A. D., paintingtook a slight impetus in the representation of sacred subjects, but after the Gothic invasions almost completely died out, until in the Eleventh Century, A. I)., when many Greek paintings were brought from the East, and the Byzantine influence was exerted in the painting, as well as the architecture of Italy. But it was in the Thirteenth Century, and in Tuscany that the regeneration of the art of painting really began. A movement beginning in Florence spread over all Italy, and many different Schools of Painting sprang up. Of these we briefly notice the most important : I T A L I A N SCHOOLS. The Florentine School unquestionably took the lead in Italy, and was especially noted for its simplicity and purity of style. Giotto (1270-1334) was its first great master,and among the illustrious names succeeding him we find Fra Angelieo, the gentle Monk of Fiesole, Massacio, Gliirlaudajo, the Master of Michael Angelo, Perugino,who formed Raphael, Fra Bartolommeo and Andrea del Sarto. The three Master-Artists, M. Angelo, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci, were trained in this School, anil executed their first works iu the Florentine m a n n e r ; but the first two of these celebrated painters became, iu later years, the great chiefs of the Roman School, while da Vinci founded a School of Painting at Milan. Some notices of these Artists will be given iu connection with the notices of their works.