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ASSYRIAN AND PERSIAN ORNAMENT.
rather indicated than expressed, became at last exaggerated; the conventional
was abandoned for an
imperfect attempt at the natural.  In Assyrian sculpture this attempt was
carried still farther, and
while the general arrangement of the subject and the pose of the single figure
were still conventional,
an attempt was made to express the muscles of the limbs and the rotundity
of the flesh; in all art
this is a symptom of decline, Nature should be idealised not copied. Many
modern statues differ in
the same way from the Venus de Milo, as do the bas-reliefs of the Ptolemies
from those of the
Pharaohs.
Assyrian Ornament, we think, presents also the same aspect of a borrowed
style and one in a state
of decline.  It is true that, as yet, we are but imperfectly acquainted with
it; the portions of the
Palaces which would contain the most ornament, the upper portions of the
walls and the ceilings,
having been, from the nature of the construction of Assyrian edifices, destroyed.
 There can be little
doubt, however, that there was as much ornament employed in the Assyrian
monuments as in the
Egyptian: in both styles there is a total absence of plain surfaces on the
walls, which are either
covered with subjects or with writing, and in situations where these
would have been inapplicable, pure ornament must have been employed
to sustain the general effect. What we possess is gathered from the
dresses on the figures of the bas-reliefs, some few fragments of painted
bricks, some objects of bronze, and the representations of the sacred
trees in the bas-reliefs. As yet we have had no remains of their con-
structive ornament, the columns and other means of support, which
would have been so decorated, being everywhere destroyed; the con-
structive ornaments which we have given in Plate XIV., from Persepolis,
being evidently of a much later date. and subject to other influences.
would be very unsafe guides in any attempt to restore the constructive  
              Egyptiao.
ornament of the Assyrian Palaces.
Assyrian Ornament, though not based on the same types as the
Egyptian, is represented in the same way.   In both styles the orna-
ments in relief, as well as those painted, are in the nature of diagrams.
There is but little surface-modelling, which was the peculiar invention
of the Greeks, who retained it within its true limits, but the Romans
carried it to great excess, till at last all breadth of effect was destroyed.
The Byzantines returned again to moderate relief, the Arabs reduced
the relief still farther, while with the Moors a modelled surface became
extremely rare.  In the other direction, the Romanesque is distinguished
in the same way from  the Early Gothic, which is itself much broader    
        Assyrian.
in effect than the later Gothic, where the surface at last became so laboured
that all repose was
destroyed.
With the exception of the pine-apple on the sacred trees, Plate XII., and
in the painted ornaments,
and a species of lotus, Nos. 4 and 5, the ornaments do not appear to be formed
on any natural type,
which still farther strengthens the idea that the Assyrian is not an original
style.  The natural laws
of radiation and tangential curvature, which we find in Egyptian ornament,
are equally observed
here, but much less truly,-rather, as it were, traditionally than instinctively.
 Nature is not followed
so closely as by the Egyptians, nor so exquisitely conventionalised as by
the Greeks.  Nos. 2 and 3,
Plate XIII., are generally supposed to be the types from which the Greeks
derived some of their
painted ornaments, but how inferior they are to the Greek in purity of form
and in the distribution
of the masses!
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