the table--harmony which will satisfy the eye, thoughts
that shall please the mind.

The objects in nature that give us the most unalloyed pleasure--birds
and flowers--are those that from all time have served as the materials
for decorative design, and therefore have been moulded into the
traditional patterns which have descended to us from the earliest
times. Design must follow the scientific laws of art, and shape the
variations of traditional forms from which we cannot escape. In our
present search after these inner truths, I repeat that we have nothing
to do with the rules of painting, sculpture, and architecture, or any
other of the secondary arts, such as wood carving, metal work, &c.;
these having each their own intrinsic principles, which must be worked
out as corollaries from the general laws of composition which govern
all Aryan art.[86]

It is curious that in drawing on the flat, in ancient frescoes, there
appear to be no acknowledged rules of perspective--hardly more in
Pompeii, than on early Chinese screens and plates; or than later in
the Bayeux tapestries. And yet the Greeks, with their unerring
instinct, actually made use of false architectural perspectives to add
to the effects of height and depth in their colonnaded buildings.[87]
They sensibly diminished the circumference of the columns, and used
other means in their designs for this purpose. They understood the
principle, but they did not carry it into flat decorative art. They
did not attempt, when they painted a landscape on the wall, to do more
than recall the idea they were sketching; and never thought of vying
in scientific or naturalistic imitation with the real landscape they
saw through the window; they did not wish to interfere with the effect
of the statue, or the human figures grouped in front of it, to which
the wall served as a background. Those threw shadows and cast lights;
but in the flat there were no shadows, no perspective--all was
flat.[88] We must draw from this the deduction that the Greeks held
that flatness was an essential quality of wall decoration (except in
friezes) as well as of all textile ornament; and for every reason we
must accept this flatness as a general law for designs in embroidery.

In hangings and dress materials, flatness is more agreeable than a
complicated shaded design, especially when it is further confused by
folds, disturbing and interrupting the flow of the lines of the
pattern.

The reader will