aults, required more care and skill, and were left, no doubt, to
experienced masons and bricklayers, but, with these exceptions, the whole
work could be confided to the first-comers, to those armies of captives
whom we see in the bas-reliefs labouring in chained gangs like convicts.

Working in this fashion, even the most formidable works could be completed
with singular rapidity. In Assyria, as in Chaldaea, a prince was no sooner
seated firmly upon the throne than his architects set about erecting a
palace which should be entirely his own. He had no wish that any name but
his should be read upon its walls, or that they should display any deeds of
valour but those due to his own prowess. In the life of constant war and
adventure led by these conquering sovereigns, speed was everything, for
they could never be sure of the morrow.

That considerations like these counted for much in the determination of the
Assyrian architects to follow a system that the abundance of durable
materials invited them to cast aside can hardly be doubted. They did not
dare to rouse the displeasure of masters who disliked to wait; they
preferred rather to sacrifice the honour and glory to be won by the
erection of solid and picturesque buildings than to use the slowly worked
materials in which alone they could be carried out.

Assyria was in all respects better provided than Chaldaea. Nature itself
seemed to invite her to throw off her too docile spirit of imitation and to
create an art of her own. Her possession of stone was not her only
advantage over her southern neighbour, she had timber also; at least the
Ninevite architect had to go a much shorter distance than his Babylonian
rival in order to find it. From the summits of the lofty mounds, at whose
feet he established his workshops, he could catch a distant view of
mountain chains, whose valleys were clothed with forests of oak and beech,
pine and cypress. There was nothing of the kind within reach of Lower
Mesopotamia. The nearest mountains, those which ran parallel to the left
bank of the Tigris but at a considerable distance, were more naked, even in
ancient times, than those of Kurdistan and Armenia. From one side of the
plain to the other there were no trees but the palm and the poplar from
which timbers of any length could be cut. The soft and fibrous date-palm
furnishes one of the worst kinds of wood in the world; the poplar, though
more useful, is not much less brittle and light. F