many problems in their own social and political life; therefore there is more cause for rejoicing, if, notwithstanding this, Europe's work of civilization, whose blessings must one day embrace all the peoples of of the earth, is promoted; if the benefits of law and order are diffused among distant nations; and if the foundations of all dignified existence--security of person and property-are firmly established. PROF. ED. SACHAU, in Deutsche Rundschau.

THE GROWTH OF SCULPTURE.

ORDINARY conceptions of art are apt to be a good deal warped by the prevailing impression among artists and critics that the origin of all things is to be sought for in Italy and Hellas, or, at best, in Egypt and Assyria. Take up an average History of Sculpture, such as Lübke's, and you will find that the author imagines he has brought you face to face with the cradle of art when he introduces you to the polished granite statues of Thebes, or the lively alabaster bas-reliefs of Kouyunjik. From the point of view generally adopted by the æsthetic world, Egypt and Assyria are the absolute beginning of every earthly art or science. But with the rapid advance of anthropology and of what may be called pre-historic archæology during the last few years, a new school of æsthetics has become inevitable—a school which should judge of art-products not by the transcendental and often dogmatic principles of Lessing or Winckelmann, but by the sober light of actual evolution. So to judge, we must push back our search far beyond the days of Sennacherib and Rameses, to the nameless artists who carved the figures of animals upon bits of mammoth-tusks under the shade of pre-glacial caves. We must consider the Egyptian and Assyrian sculptures not as rudimentary works, but as advanced products of highly developed art. We must trace the long course of previous Evolution by which the rude figures of primæval men were brought o the comparative technical perfection of Memphian or Ninevite monuments; a perfection which sometimes only just falls short of the Hellenic model by its want of the very latest and lightest touch -artistic grace and freedom. In short, we must allow that barbaric art is but a step below the civilized, while it is very many steps above the lowest savage.

In the present paper, however, it is not my intention to do more than sketch very briefly, and in a merely prefatory manner, the primitive stages of plastic art. I wish, rather, here to point out sundry influences which, as it seems to me, have conspired to give their peculiar characteristics to the very advanced sculpture of Egypt, Assyria, Greece, and India. But as a preliminary to such

an exposition, it will be well to touch lightly upon sundry prior and necessary stages of early imitative art.

When a child begins spontaneously to draw, its first attempt is generally a rough representation of the human form. It draws a man, and a man in the abstract only. He is " bilaterally symmetrical," as the naturalists say; a full-faced figure, with all the limbs and features displayed entire. He has a round face, two goggle eyes, a nose and mouth, a cylindrical body, two arms held out at a more or less acute angle, with five fingers on each, and two legs, also divergent, with a pair of terminal knobs to represent the feet. This is the very parent of art, a symbolical or mathematical man, a rough diagram of humanity, reduced to its simplest component elements. It still survives as the sole representation of a man amongst our own street boys and amongst many savage races. Moreover, it affords us a good clue to all the faults and errors, the partial successes and tentative improvements, of subsequent artists. An Egyptian or Assyrian pond always consists of a square diagram of some water, surrounded by diagrams of trees, pointing outward from it in every direction, so that some of them are placed sideways, and some of them upside down. So, too, if you ask any educated European who is ignorant of drawing to sketch you the figure of a chair, you will find that he fails just where the street boy fails in representing the human face. He is too abstract and mathematical; he lets his intellectual appreciation of the chair as possessing four legs and a back and a seat, all at right angles and in certain determinate planes, carry away his judgment to the detriment of his visual chair, whose angles are all irregular, and whose planes interfere with one another in extraordinary ways. He turns you ont a diagram, a section, or an elevation of a chair, not a picture in the true sense. That is the stumbling-block of all early painters and sculptors, the difficulty which they had slowly to overcome before they could arrive at the modern truthfulness of delineation.

In the technical language of painting, such truthfulness of delineation, such correct imitation of the visual object in its visible as opposed to its geometrical relations, is known as drawing. It includes perspective, foreshortening, and all the other devices by which we represent the visual field on a flat surface. But the term cannot, of course, be applied to sculpture, where something analogous nevertheless exists, especially in bas-relief. Accordingly, I própose in the present paper to employ the word Imitation in this general sense as including accuracy of representation in either art. And such accuracy of imitation we may take as the real and objective test of artistic evolution, at least so far as the imitative arts are concerned. I shall give examples hereafter which will illustrate the difference between the application of this test and of those shadowy and artificial standards so generally employed by the transcendental school.

So far as I know, the Polynesians and many other savages have not progressed beyond the full-face stage of human portraiture above described. Next in rank comes the drawing of a profile, as we find it among the Eskimos and the bushmen. Our own children soon attain to this level, which is one degree bigher than that of the full face, as it implies a special point of view, suppresses half the features, and is not diagrammatic or symbolical of all the separate parts. Negroes and North American Indians cannot understand profile they ask what has become of the other eye. At this second degree may also be placed the representation of animals as the Eskimos represent them-a single side view, with the creature in what may be called an abstract position; that is to say, doing nothing particular. Third in rank we may put the rudimentary perspective stage, where limbs are represented in drawing or basrelief as standing one behind another, and where one body or portion of a body is permitted to conceal another. Still the various figures are seen all on one plane, and stand side by side, in a sort of processional order (like that of the Bayeux tapestry), with little composition and no background; nor have they yet much variety of attitude. Successively higher steps show us the figures in different positions, as walking, running, sitting, or lying down; then, again, as performing complicated actions; finally, as showing emotion, expression, and individuality in their faces. At the same time

the processional order disappears; perspective begins to come into use, and the limbs betray some attention to rough anatomical proprieties. Thus, by slow degrees, the symbolical and mathematical drawing of savages evolves into the imitative painting and sculpture of civilized races.

I wish to catch this evolving and yet undifferentiated art at the point where it is still neither painting nor sculpture, and where it has just passed the fourth stage in the course of development here indicated. From this point I wish to observe the causes which made it assume its well-known national plastic forms in Egypt, Assyria, Hellas, and India respectively. To do so, it will be necessary shortly to recapitulate some facts in the history of its evolution, familiar to most æsthetic students, but less so, perhaps, to the mass of general readers. Painting and sculpture, then, in their western shape at least, started from a common origin in such processional pictures as those above described-pictures of whose primitive peculiarities the Egyptian wall paintings and Etruscan vases will give us a fair idea, though in a more developed form. Setting out from this original mode, sculpture first diverged by the addition of incised lines, marking the boundaries of the colored figures standing out flat in very low relief. Then the edges being rounded and the details incised as well as painted, bas-relief proper comes into existence. Corner figures, like those of the Assyrian bulls and gods, give us the earliest hint of the statue. At first

seated or erect, with arms placed directly down the side to the thighs, and legs united together, the primitive statues formed a single piece with the block of stone behind them. Becoming gradually higher and higher in relief, they at last stood out as almost separate figures, with a column at the back to support their weight. At last they assumed the wholly separate position. Side by side with these changes, the arms are cut away from the sides, and the legs are opened and placed one before the other. Gradually more action is thrown into the limbs, and more expression into the features; till, finally, the cat-faced Egyptian Pasht, with her legs firmly set together, and her hands laid flat upon her knees, gives place to the free Hellenic Discobolus, with every limb admirably molded into exact imitation of an ideally beautiful human form, in a speaking attitude of graceful momentary activity.

Now if we look for a minute at a few of the criticisms already passed by æsthetic authorities upon works of national art, we shall see how far they differ from those which must be passed by the application of this objective imitative test. There are in the British Museum some Assyrian bas-reliefs from Kouyunjik, of the age of Asshur-bani-pal, or Sardanapalus, concerning which no less a writer than Sir A. H. Layard delivers himself after this fashion:"In that which constitutes the highest quality of art, in variety of detail and ornament, in attempts at composition, in severity of style, and purity of outline, they are inferior to the earliest Assyrian monuments with which we are acquainted-those from the northwest palace at Nimrod. They bear, indeed, the same relation to them as the later Egyptian monuments do to the earlier." But the fact is that, if we accept imitation as our test, we must rank these very bas-reliefs as the highest products of Assyrian art. Any one who will look at the original works in the Museum can judge for himself. The animals in them are represented in very truthful and unsymmetrical attitudes, and often show considerable expression. A wounded lion seizing a chariot-wheel has its face and two paws given with a fidelity and an attention to perspective truly astonishing. The parts of bodies passing in front of one another are managed with high technical skill. A lion enclosed in a cage is seen through the bars in an admirable manner. And though conventionalism is allowed to reign for the most part in the human figure, especially in the sacred case of the king, yet the muscles are brought out with considerable anatomical correctness, and the inferior personages are often in really decent drawing, even when judged as Europeans now judge. All these points betoken advance upon the older works. To put it plainly, Sir A. H. Layard seems to have set up as a standard certain rather ideal characters of art, to have erected the archaic Assyrian type with which he was familiar, into an absolute model, and then to have found fault with these particular bas-reliefs because they were less " severe" and

pure"-that is to say, more highly evolved-than his artificial standard of national excellence.

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Similarly, I find Herr Lübke placing Indian sculpture far below that of Egypt and Assyria. For this singular judgment he gives merely fanciful and, as it seems to me, mystical reasons. It might, indeed, be asserted," he says, "that a touch of naïve grace marks the best of these works, but this grace breathes no animation of mind nor power of thought or will; at the most it may be compared with the loveliness of the flowers of the field; there is nothing in it of moral consciousness." I confess I find it hard to discover traces of moral consciousness in the Memnon or the winged bul's; but any child can see that while Egyptian statues are stiff, unnatural, symmetrical, and absolutely devoid of anatomical detail, many Indian statues are free in position, stand with arms and legs in natural and graceful attitudes, show in their faces individuality or even expression, and represent the limbs with anatomical correctness only idealized into a somewhat voluptuous smoothness and rotundity. Here, again, we must suppose that a preconceived transcendental idea has blinded the critic to obvious excellence of imitation.*

One word to prevent misapprehension. I do not mean to say that such a rough test as that here employed can be used to measure the respective value of the highest artistic work. It can merely be employed to weigh nation against nation. In our own days, when good imitation is almost universal, when drawing, and perspective, and anatomy, are taught systematically to all our artists, we necessarily judge of æsthetic products by higher and mainly emotional standards. Mr. Frith does not differ much from Mr. Burne Jones, or M. Legros, or Sir Frederic Leighton, in mere technical ability to represent what he sees on a flat surface; but he differs greatly in

* In justice to Lübke I should like to add that he differs totally from Sir A. H. Layard as to the Kouyunjik sculptures, and agree, on the whole, with my independently-formed opinion. To show how greatly our doctors disagree on such points, I venture to transcribe the whole of his remarks on this subject. "If the works at Khorsabad," he says, "mark the transition from the strict old style to one of greater freedom, the latter acquires its full sway in the palace of Kujjundschik. It is true, even here, the extent of subject-matter, the idea and its intellectual importance, remain unchanged. The Assyrian artists were compelled to restrict themselves, as their forefathers had done for centuries, to the glorification of the life and actions of their princes. But, while the ideas were limited to the old narrow circle, the observation of nature had increased so considerably in acuteness, extent, and delicacy, the representations had gained such ease, freshness, and variety, and the power of characterization had become so enlarged by the study of individual life, that an advance proclaims itself everywhere. At the same time, the art had lost nothing of its earlier excellencies, except, perhaps, the powerful gloomy grandeur of the principal figures; this was exchanged for the softer but in nowise feeble grace of a more animated style and for the wealth of an animation that had thrown aside its fetters in various new ideas and pregnant subjects." Hre Lübke's own transcendental canons do not mislead him, and he therefore avoids the fanciful error into which Layard s canons have led the great explorer.