re idols in niches or shrines, distorted in form or attitude; foliage
of unnatural, twisted plants, added to the recurring of the lotus and
tree of life; or animals destroying each other, or kneeling in worship
to the idols. These ugly designs are purely conventional. Fergusson
suggests that they were introduced into Mexico in the fourth or fifth
centuries A.D. by Buddhism.[92]

Those many-armed, sometimes many-faced divinities drove out the
beautiful Aryan types, which, however, resumed their sway when the
wave of the Renaissance flowed back to India, and was remodelled by
Oriental taste to the lovely designs we find in the Taj Mahal.

In M. Blanc's classification of ornament, he has placed Gothic design
under the head of deliberate complication. The whole of the Gothic
decorations, which are a gradual growth in one direction, arose from
the study of interlacing boughs and stems, employed as the enrichment
of the newly-grown forms of the vaulted roofs. The possibilities of
great size and height covered these designs and inspired all their
decoration; and the effect of reiteration and long recurring lines in
perspective was essentially the motive of these avenues in stone.[93]

Here enter the principles of repetition and progression, and you will
find how carefully the designers of the twelfth, thirteenth, and
fourteenth centuries worked up to these ideas. You will see in their
embroideries, shining figures or pictures in gold, silver, and
coloured silks, shimmering on dark velvet backgrounds, each design
terminating a perspective of architectural forms which enhances their
brilliancy. The most effective, probably, were generally employed for
the adornment of the high altar, so as to be seen from a great
distance. The smaller and less distinct and more delicate ornaments
were reserved for the side chapels or for smaller churches, where such
distant effects were inappropriate. But the motives of ecclesiastical
embroidery will be discussed in a future chapter.

All attempts at pictorial art are a mistake in textiles. It does not
enter into such designs; and when by chance it is allowed to be so
used, it is an error of judgment, and only exhibits a laborious and
useless ingenuity. It is no longer an artistic delineation of a
natural object, but becomes an imitation of another way of rendering
such objects.

Mr. Redgrave says that pictorial art in our manufactures is one of our
great mistakes. "The picture must be inde