ANTIQUITY OF THE FINE ARTS.

Homer, who flourished about B. C. 900, gives a striking proof of the antiquity of the fine arts, in his description of that admirable piece of chased and inlaid work—the shield of Achilles. Its rich design could not have been imagined, unless the arts necessary to produce it had arrived to a high degree of perfection in his country at the time he wrote, though we may doubt whether, at the period of the Trojan war, three hundred years before Homer, there existed artificers capable of executing it.

Within a century after the taking of Troy, the Greeks had founded many new colonies in Asia Minor, and the Heraclidæ finally regained their ancient seats in the Peloponnesus. It is worthy of remark that about that period, David built his house of cedars, and Solomon adorned Jerusalem with her magnificent first temple, and that Hiram, king of Tyre, sent to Solomon “a cunning man, endued with understanding,” to assist him in the building of the temple, but more especially to superintend the execution of the ornaments. (1st Kings, vii, 13, and 2d Chron., ii, 14.)