The Atlantic Telegraph—Ancient Art and Modern Progress [pp. 507-511]

THIE ATLANTIC TELEGRAPIIH ANCIENT ART) ETC.
ART. II.-THE ATLANTIC TELEGRAPH, ANCIENT ART, AND
MODERN PROGRESS.
WE were standing near the Capitol, a short time since, admi-ing its grandeur, its beauty, and its magnificence, and
reflecting with pride on the greatness of our country which
already required additions to the building larger than the
original structure. Additions which, even if they somewhat
mar the symmetry of the building, will more than compensate
for any want of harmony of proportion in the historical associations which they will always excite in the mind. The
original building is of coarse free-stone, and its architectural
construction comparatively plain. The vast wings that have
just been added are of fine marble, and all the workmanship
most costly and elaborate. But a sudden feeling of mortification passed over us when I reflected here are displayed
American growth, American wealth, American handiwork,
but there is no American thought here-that is, all Greekit is a Grecian Capitol reared in America. Architecture has
undergone no improvement for two thousand years; and the
eloquence that oft reverberates within the magnificent Halls
of this Greek structure, is but an unconscious attempt to imitate Grecian models. Demosthenes is still the great master
of oratory; we say " lke ts," because he yet lives with us in
his Phillipics. He might well have exclaimed with Horace,
"Yon omnis mortai.'
Homer is the father and the greatest of poets: he has been
imitated for more than two thousand years, but never equaled.
The Greek tragedians excel all others, unless Shakspeare be
an exception. Pindar and Horace, as writers of odes, are
incomparably superior to any of the moderns. In historical
composition, Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, Tacitus, and many
others of the ancients, are the masters from whom the moderns learn their art. The Greeks surpassed all who have succeeded them in the art of sculpture, and no doubt in painting
also. There has been no advance, no improvement, in the
science of politics, of ethics, of economics, of pure metaphysics, or of logic, since the time of Aristotle; and one of
the fruits, and best fruits, of the social and political reaction,
which is now progressing, will be the revival of the study of
Aristotle. The pretended discoveries of Bacon, in the art of
logic, was but the giving names to things, that every one,
who reasoned at all, had been practising throughout all tim.
What Butler says of rhetoric is equally true of logic:
"For all the Rhetoricians rules
But teach to name his tools."
2