withdrawn. I undertake to show it only as it stands; not to efface it—still less to repaint it." To say that "the curtain is the picture," is, fortunately for history, a mythical saying; and to affirm that "the curtain contains nothing behind, and cannot by any ingenuity be withdrawn," rests on that feeling which, thirty years since, would have classed the railway locomotive, and its glowing eye of night, with the eye of the Cyclops. The case may be stated as follows:—The Picture is Indian—the Curtain is Grecian; and that Curtain is now Withdrawn. 1 "Hist. Greece," vol. i. Pref. p. xiii. Among the strongest peculiarities of the so-called heroic period of Greece, appear the perfection of the Arts and the abundance of gold; the profusion of golden vessels; their varied yet elegant workmanship; the beauty of embroidered shawls; the tasteful, the ample produce of the loom; the numerous ornaments of ivory; the staining and working of that material; the gift of necklaces as a valuable present sometimes, too, from the Gods; the brazen tripods and the cauldrons; the social refinement and comfort; the magnificent palaces of Alcinous and Menelaus; and, finally, in the great contest of Troy, the constant use of the war-chariot both by Greeks and Asiatics. "But the most magnificent example of the art of metallurgy," observes Mr. Ottley,1 "" was the famous shield of Achilles. In the centre were the waves of ocean, rolling round the extremities; then followed, in a beautiful series, scenes of 1 "Social Condition of the Greeks," By the Rev. J. B. Ottley, M.A., late Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. See Hist, of Greece, p. 368. "Encyclopædia Metropolitana," vol. xv., 1851. pastoral life, tillage, the harvest, and the vintage; there, too, was the siege, the ambuscade, and the battle; judicial inquiry, and political deliberation; the musical festivities of a marriage, and the evolutions of a national dance. The grouping of these scenes, respectively, their number, variety, and contrast, attest the skill of the artist, or of the poet, or of both. How the difference of colour was produced is uncertain; it might have been by paint, since ivory was stained to adorn the bits of horses; or, perhaps, by the effect of fire, for the art of fusing metals was known. Indeed, casting, gilding, and carving, both in wood and metal, were practised at a much earlier time by those who are described in Exodus, as 'devising cunning works' to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, and in cutting of stones to set them, and in carving timber, to work in all manner of workmanship. That temple, which the piety of Solomon dedicated, and which his opulence enriched, owed the beauty and the delicacy of the sculptured decorations to the skill of a Tyrian artificer. The descriptions of it, recorded in the national archives of Judea, may vindicate Homer from unduly exaggerating either the abundance of the precious metals, or the progress of the ornamental arts. Nor was the warrior altogether unindebted to the labours of the needle and the loom; wild animals were embroidered on his belt—the trophies of his dexterity in the chase, and the decoration of his person in the fight. More ample robes were either received as the pledge of courteous hospitality, or won as the prize of valour. Such occupations suited the secluded life and intellectual habits of Oriental females; they are mentioned early, with an emphasis of description, which seems to mark their costliness and value. 'Have they not sped? Have they not divided the prey?—to Sisera a prey of divers colours; a prey of divers colours of needlework on both sides, meet for the necks of them that take the spoil.' Such garments were stored INDIAN COLONISATION. 11 in the treasury of Priam. Sidonian artists were most expert in their fabrication: but the high-born ladies of the court were, apparently, no mean proficients. Helen weaves a representation of a battle between the Greeks and the Trojans; Andromache copies flowers in a veil; the web of Penelope is proverbially known—that funeral offering for Laertes from the hand of filial affection; while another, which she presents to an unknown guest, is thus beautifully described :: In ample mode, A robe of military purple flow'd O'er all his frame: illustrious on his breast, A vest, that dazzled like a cloudless sun: The female train, who round him throng'd to gaze, Pope's Hom., Od. xix. 261. "It was natural that the goldsmith and the jeweller should be put in requisition, when the materials of their trade were abundant. We trace them in female dress, and in the implements of the toilet; in both there is, together with the magnificence of real wealth, much of the simplicity of real taste. There were necklaces of gold and of amber; there were ear-rings, whose pendant drops imitated either the form or the brilliancy of the human eye; the hair was curled or braided, and covered with a veil; the robe was fastened over the bosom with golden clasps; a fringe surrounded the waist, and completed the full-dress costume of a lady of the Homeric age. The appointments of her palace were as costly as the decorations of her person; its walls glittered with silver, tin, ivory, brass, and amber; her tripod has four handles, graced by eight golden doves; her lyre has a silver frame, her basket is silver,1 and her distaff gold; the ewers and basins which are served at the banquet, and even the bath which alleviates fatigue, are of the like precious materials." But what, I would ask, has become in the historical times of these arts, of these luxuries, and more particularly of the equestrian hero, his faithful equerry, and his car? The warcar, after a long banishment from Greece, once more makes a prominent figure on the distant field of Cunaxa; but for Greece, it has been for ages a neglected arm of her military service. Now, the whole of this state of society, civil and military, must strike every one as being eminently Asiatic; much of it specifically Indian. Such it undoubtedly is; and I shall demonstrate that these evidences were but the attendant tokens of an Indian colonisation, with its corresponding religion and language. I shall exhibit dynasties disappearing from Western India, to appear again in Greece: clans, whose martial fame is still recorded in the faithful chronicles of North-Western India, as the gallant bands who fought upon the plains of Troy; and, in fact, the whole of Greece, from the era of the supposed god-ships of Poseidon and Zeus, down to the close of the Trojan war, as being Indian in language, sentiment, and religion, and in the arts of peace and war. Much I shall, I doubt not, incontestably establish; much must be left to a future period. Yet that which is granted to be fairly wrought out, may stand as an earnest of the correctness of the principle by which these results have been produced. 2 It was no futile imagination that led Evémerus to 1 Od. iv. 131. Some ancient jewellery found in Ithaca in a tomb amidst ruins which tradition designates as the residence of Odysseus, are as exquisite in their workmanship as any of those ornaments which Homer describes. Their date is unknown. See Hughes's Greece, vol. i. p. 160. 2 Evémerus or Euhémerus (Evημepos) a Sicilian author at the time of Alexander the Great and his immediate successors. Most writers call him |