at the recurrence of a pattern,
for instance the "wave," over the whole world, proves that it really
came from many sources, under the same conditions of life and art;
showing also that a pattern is a thing that, like a flower, must grow,
if the culture of the race be equal. I do not believe this. We can
nearly always trace the family history of a pattern to its original
motive; and in the very few cases where we are unable to do so, it is
hardly necessary to cover our ignorance by stretching the fashionable
theory of development over the few instances that are as yet
unaccountable.

I have been repeatedly asked to procure or to invent a new pattern.
Such is my respect for the decorative achievement called a "pattern,"
that I cannot hope for the moment of inspiration in which I might
create such a thing. If any one has in his lifetime invented a
pattern, he has done something truly remarkable, and as rare as is a
really original thought on any subject. Patterns are commonly, like
men, the result of many centuries of long descent from ancestors of
remote antiquity.

Individuals differ from their ancestors through inherited and
surrounding conditions, and through the modifying powers of evolution,
climate, and education. So also a pattern has, besides its ancestry
and descent, the unconscious mark or seal of its day; and it is easy
to trace whence it comes, if we set ourselves to examine the style of
it seriously.

The patterns of which we can nearly always name at once the
nationality, are the Assyrian, the Chinese, the Egyptian, the Hindu
(Aryan and Turanian), the Persian, the Archaic and the highly
developed Grecian; the Roman, the Celtic, the Byzantine, the Arabian,
the Gothic, the Renaissance, the Spanish Plateresque, the Louis
Quatorze, and those of the art of Central America.

The pattern cannot exist without design. Design means intention and
motive. Many of the motives in Oriental textile decorations are
suggestive of intention, as is shown by their names. Among Indian
patterns we meet with "ripples of silver," "sunshine and shade,"
"pigeon's eye," "peacock's neck," &c.[96]

Patterns must be classed either by their dates, when ascertained, or
according to their style, which must generally be allowed to cover
vast areas and periods irregularly drifting down, overlapping, or
being absorbed or effaced by the circumstances they have encountered.

Only when a national style has been obstinately fixed, as in Ch