time has spared us no satisfactory specimens. Throughout the convulsions of the Crusades, the brief and inglorious dynasty of the Latins, and the powerless reigns of the restored Palæologi, the practice of painting was never thoroughly abandoned; but the soul of art had fled, fancy and invention were extinct; the productions of the Grecian artists were but puerile copies of the works of their predecessors, which they continued to reiterate with a powerless hand, till, in the maturity of political and intellectual decay, the empire and its arts sunk into the same abyss.*

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by the Sultan of Iconium, (with whom he was suspected to be in correspondence,) instead of the pictures of the wars of the ancient Greeks, or the battles and hunts of the moderns, with which the nobles were wont to adorn their dwellings. Χρόνῳ δὲ ὕστερον ἐς Βυζάντιον ἐπανιών, ἐπειδή ποτε γρα φαῖς ἐπαγλαΐσαι των προαστίων αὐτῷ δωματίων ἠβουλήθη τινὰ, οὔτε τινας Ελληνίους παλαιοτέρας ἐνέθετο πράξεις αὐτοῖς, οὔτε μὲν τὰ Βασιλέως ὁποῖα καὶ μᾶλλον τοῖς ἐν ἀρχαῖς εἴθισται, διεξἦλθεν ἔργα ὅσα ἔν τε πολέμοις καὶ θηροκτονίαις αὐτὸς ειργαστο. τούτων ἀφέμενος τὰς

τοῦ Σουλτανοὺ ἀνέστηλου· στρατηγίας ἐπὶ δωμάτων αὐτὸς δημο σιεύων κατὰ τὴν γραφήν. - Cinnami Histor. I. vi. c. 6. p. 155, 156.

*

Agincourt supposes that at the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth centuries there were some traces of a revival of painting in Greece, and that her artists were quickly following the example of those of Italy; but the specimens which he has adduced in support of this idea are

The religious prejudices of the Turks, which induce them to consider all representations of the human form as impious, operate as an effectual barrier to the practice of the arts in their dominions.* Their houses are ornamented with a few landscapes and paintings of inanimate nature, and their chambers are decorated with arabesques and gilded tracery; but as these childish productions require neither attentive study nor scientific execution, design may be said to be unknown amongst them. The Greeks, in their churches, still use some miserable portraits of Christ, the Panagia, and the Saints, generally drawn upon a gilded ground, such as exists in the works of Giotto, Cimabue, and the fathers of the Italian schools. Of these, a large proportion is said to be imported from Russia, where their primitive workmanship attests the little progress made by these ecclesiastical artists since the days of Helena and Vladimir. Nay, so debasing are the trammels of bigotry, that even ugliness is considered an enhancement of these sacred emblems, which seem to excite the stronger feelings of devotion

almost too miserable to afford any grounds for the theory. They are principally taken from a MS. of a Greek Bible of the fourteenth century, preserved in the Vatican, and will be found in plate lxii. of his Decline of Painting. * Eton, p. 211. Guys, v. i. l. 32. p. 509.

the farther they recede from the likeness of humanity.* In the islands and the remoter districts, too, a feeling of superstition attaches fatal consequences to the drawing of portraits, and the death of the individual represented is considered as a speedy consequence of the act. But though the practice of the arts is thus virtually extinct amongst the Greeks,† it is a remarkable fact, that they have still preserved a recollection of the modes of working pursued by their ancestors; and the knowledge both of frescoes and encaustic is still said to exist in the Archipelago, and on the shores of Greece.‡

* Waddington's Present Condition and Prospects of the Greek Church, c. v. p. 59. I remember, likewise, to have met with an anecdote of a Greek prelate, who refused to take a painting executed by Titian (I think,) because the chiaroscuro was so perfect as to give it a scandalous resemblance to a sculptured figure.

"Les beaux arts

+ Guys, v. i. l. 81. p. 482. l. 32. p. 509. ont été fort en règne dans les Isles de Grèce. Aujourd'hui c'est la barbarie et la grossièreté même.

Pour la peinture, c'est pitié que de voir leur méchant goût; le plus mauvais barbouillage est regardé avec admiration, parcequ'il n'y a personne qui puisse faire mieux. Les peintres Candiots sont renommez, quoique leurs tableaux soient pitoiables."-Hist. de l'Archipel, 1. iv. p. 380. Paris,

1698.

"The Greeks have a very curious manner of painting in fresco, which has many advantages. I also saw the ancient method of painting with wax, and fixing the colours by heat,

practised by a Greek, and at a place I least expected it, at the Dardanelles, for at Constantinople it is unknown. Whether this be exactly the encaustic painting of the ancients it is hazardous to affirm, though I myself have not the least doubt respecting it. Thus much is certain, that it has, with regard to facility, very considerable advantages over the oil painting now in use; it has all its freedom, and the vivacity of its colours, added to solidity and the durability which the experience of twenty centuries has proved wax-painting to be possessed of."-Eton, p. 222.

The same circumstance had been previously remarked by Castellan, Lettres sur la Morée, pp. 134. 136.

CHAPTER XV.

Progress of the Greeks, from the Peace of Passarowitz, A. D. 1718, to the termination of the Russian Expedition to the Morea, A. D. 1770.

1718.

I HAVE in the preceding pages endeavoured A.D. to relate the decline of Greece, from her first subjection to a foreign power to her final assignment to the Ottomans; I have detailed, as far as it was practicable, the particulars of her oppression, and pointed out those causes, which, even in the depths of her slavery, tended to preserve her people distinct from their conquerors,―her language, her religion, her church, her merchants, her independent warriors, and her diplomatic aristocracy. It now remains to commence a brighter era in her annals, to mark the first rays of intellectual light which penetrated the darkness of her decay, and to trace, in their gradual dissemination, the full developement of her awakened energies. Nor can