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lines of bas-reliefs recording the ancient glories of Assyria, the Arabs wandering to and fro, the gloomy passages, formed a picture which imagination could scarcely realize, and which, once seen, could scarcely be forgotten."

Although no doubt the arts of Egypt and of Assyria exercised a considerable influence upon the Greeks, we fail to trace its manifestation in the monuments of the last-mentioned people to anything resembling the extent to which one might naturally assume it would have been likely to show itself. Upon the art of Persia, however, Nineveh unquestionably exercised a commanding influence.

The Assyrians and Persians seem to have made their pictures and sculptures, as incorporated in their architecture, in almost every case subservient to the record of the exploits of their sovereigns. It is the essentially human and naturalistic character of the Assyrian bas-reliefs, their quantity and power of expression, which rivet the attention of the student in contemplating their monuments. If the Egyptians desired to plant upon their monuments records of the greatness of their gods, the Assyrians seem to have aimed with no less energy to preserve for all times records of the greatness of their kings and people.

In the early monuments of the Hindoo races, that expression of labour which, however great it may have been, owing to the nature of the materials chiefly used, is rather concealed than revealed in the Egyptian and Assyrian monuments—being made subservient to the general effect of a majestic simplicity—was brought emphatically into the foreground. The despot who could imprint upon the monuments he caused to be executed the expression of his boundless command over the lives and labour of multitudes, would seem to have been considered as the potentate who made the worthiest offerings to his deities, and who in so doing left behind him the noblest record of his sovereign grandeur.

To cut out of the hardest and least tractable materials