There are several forms of it on a large
terra-cotta vase in the British Museum from Kameiros in Rhodes, and on
Chinese fictiles and embroideries. It is found also on garments in
Iceland, whither the Greek patterns must have drifted through Norway,
and, as they could go no further, there they remained.

I have often spoken of the extraordinary survival of a pattern. This
is easy to account for when fashion, "the disturber," had not yet
existed. Then the ancient motive told its own tale, and its great age
was its claim to perpetual youth; but it is more remarkable where we
meet with revivals at distant periods, and apparently without any
connecting link of ancestry or style.

For instance, the women of Genoa wore large cotton veils, printed with
the Indian conventional tree and beast pattern, down to thirty years
ago, when the fashion changed, and winter bonnets and summer muslin
veils displaced the old costume. These patterns are now being printed
in England on scores of cotton curtains for beds and windows.

GEOMETRICAL.

Geometrical patterns may be reduced to a very few primitive elements.

[Illustration: Fig. 18.
Varied adjustments of Square and Circle.]

1. The Line, including straight and wavy lines.

2. The Angular Forms, including squares, oblongs, cubes, &c.

3. The Triangular, including zigzags, diamonds, &c.

4. The Circular, including all spots, discs, and radiations.

All these can be blended or mixed so as to form endless varieties. For
instance, the square and the circle can intersect each other in
different proportions, so as to give an entirely new effect to the
pattern, each time the balance is altered or the phase of the
repetition varied. The illustration will explain this. (Fig. 18.)

Right angles may intersect each other so as to produce the whole gamut
of Chinese lattice-work decoration, and all the Celtic and
Scandinavian entwined patterns, from which so many of the embroideries
in the Italian pictures of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are
probably descended.

The Moorish patterns are geometrical, and are created on the principle
of avoiding in art the representation of any created thing. They show
much ingenuity in keeping clear of any possible meaning. Most of these
conventional patterns are founded on the ogee-arch and a kind of
honeycomb pattern, involved and inverted. Their tiles, which nearest
approach textile design, have, indeed, certain vegetable forms added