This completes the whole of the Sculptures from Nineveh as yet placed in the galleries. For the description of the additional new sculptures at present under repair, we will refer to the present chapter from page 366 to page 415. ASSYRIAN ART, INDUSTRY, AND COMMERCE. THE most striking facts that present themselves to our imagination, in contemplating the remains of the Assyrian Palaces, are the perfection to which the art of sculpture had arrived at so remote a period, and the important evidence they afford of conversance with the most refined arts of life; both indicating a pitch of refinement that we should find it difficult to reconcile with the most extended scheme of chronology, if, at the same time, we were bound to suppose that the first settlers in the land were in a parallel state of ignorance and degradation with the inhabitants of New South Wales, or with those of the back-woods of America. The Scriptures, however, afford ample evidence of a primitive civilisation, especially in the knowledge of the working in metals, and of other refined arts (Gen. iv. 17, 21, 22,) even before the Deluge; and this testimony, we apprehend, sufficiently accounts for any degree of proficiency we find in the works of art of these remote ages, and for that early civilisation of the human family which the contemplation of these sculptures suggests. The objects of sculpture in the more remote ages being 424 ASSYRIAN ART, INDUSTRY, AND COMMERCE. simply to record the remarkable events in the history of the people and their sovereigns, and to make the record intelligible to those who could gain the required information from no other source, the necessity for presenting the events vividly to the imagination of the spectator, unavoidably induced a conventional mode of representation, that, in course of time, became settled and determined by certain laws. To this circumstance we attribute the mode of portraying the human figure, such as we find in these and in the Egyptian rilievi, and even in those of Greece, which, when once adopted, was never after wholly abandoned, because the art itself imposes certain limits, that the moderns have in vain endeavoured to remove, by the introduction of perspective, so essential an element in the sister art, but which is entirely incompatible with sculpture. It was not till this primitive object in the practice of sculpture had ceased in some measure to be so rigidly observed, and the delineation of the human form1 had become the more important aim of the artist, that sculpture began to leave the rigid trammels imposed upon it, and ultimately to attain that perfection we admire in the statues of the Phidian age, when the beauty of the human form, in all its endless varieties, was portrayed in the statues of the gods and heroes, its chief aim being to assign to each a peculiarity of excellence which eventually became as much the attribute of the particular divinity as any emblematic attribute peculiarly belonging to it, as the thunderbolt to Jupiter, the caduceus to Mercury, or the breast-plate to Minerva. From the very beginning, the Greek sculptors seem to have possessed a nicer perception of this quality, and a greater facility in expressing it, than the other people of antiquity, and they consequently quickly freed themselves from the bonds which shackled them. The Egyptians, on the contrary, tied down by a system of theocracy which regulated every action of their life, never shook off the prescribed rules; their sculpture was always influenced by them; and their productions in the time of the Romans were but imperfect copies of the works executed during the reign of the most ancient Pharaohs, influenced in a still more eminent degree by prescribed and time-honored conventionalities. Thus, at the present day, the painters who decorate the Greek or Arme1 Isaiah, xliv. 13. nian churches bend to consecrated rules or habits, and are content to copy and reproduce the old Byzantine types in all their stiffness; wanting always a certain natural simplicity, which renders their copies inferior to the originals. The Egyptians, like all other people in their infancy, attached importance to the exterior line only. In their paintings and sculptures they made simple strokes of astonishing boldness and character, by which both proportions and action were rendered with great perfection. But here their science stopped; and in later times, as in the most remote, they never thought of completing these outlines by an exact representation of the anatomical details contained within them. Their finest statues are, in this respect, as defective as their bas-reliefs and paintings. Seizing on the characteristic forms of objects, they never varied them under whatever aspect; thus the front view of the eye was always introduced in the profile face; the profile foot in the front view of the figure; and but extremely rarely does the front face occur, although the body may be facing,- -a law which seems also to have considerably influenced the Greek sculptors in their compositions for bas-relief; and, as it appears to us, one imposed by the art itself. necessary details, however, for characterising the objects in Egyptian and Assyrian reliefs are always made visible, whether they could in the particular point of view be seen or not. Lastly, always sacrificing truth to the desire of hiding nothing which in their eyes appeared more important, the Egyptian painters and sculptors have carefully avoided crossing the figures by accessory objects which would have hidden any part of them,-a law which the Greeks also observed; and, possibly, to the same law may be attributed, in these and Egyptian representations of battles, the larger dimensions they have given to the conquerors than to the conquered. All the Most of these characteristics are found in Assyrian as well as in Egyptian art; but they are less strongly marked, and the careful observer can perceive that the art is emerging from its state of infancy. The bodies are no longer all full-face, if we may so express it, and they have also less conventional stiffness. The figures consist no more of mere outlines; the heads are well modelled; and the anatomical details of the limbs, the bones, and the muscles are always represented, though coarsely and ignorantly expressed, and with a conventional |