nd these in their full intensities;
and so is less heterogeneous than a painting which, introducing the
primary colours but sparingly, employs numerous intermediate tints, each
of heterogeneous composition, and differing from the rest not only in
quality but in strength. Moreover, we see in these early works great
uniformity of conception. The same arrangement of figures is perpetually
reproduced--the same actions, attitudes, faces, dresses. In Egypt the
modes of representation were so fixed that it was sacrilege to introduce
a novelty. The Assyrian bas-reliefs display parallel characters.
Deities, kings, attendants, winged-figures and animals, are time after
time depicted in like positions, holding like implements, doing like
things, and with like expression or non-expression of face. If a
palm-grove is introduced, all the trees are of the same height, have the
same number of leaves, and are equidistant. When water is imitated, each
wave is a counterpart of the rest; and the fish, almost always of one
kind, are evenly distributed over the surface. The beards of the kings,
the gods, and the winged-figures, are everywhere similar; as are the
manes of the lions, and equally so those of the horses. Hair is
represented throughout by one form of curl. The king's beard is quite
architecturally built up of compound tiers of uniform curls, alternating
with twisted tiers placed in a transverse direction, and arranged with
perfect regularity; and the terminal tufts of the bulls' tails are
represented in exactly the same manner. Without tracing out analogous
facts in early Christian art, in which, though less striking, they are
still visible, the advance in heterogeneity will be sufficiently
manifest on remembering that in the pictures of our own day the
composition is endlessly varied; the attitudes, faces, expressions,
unlike; the subordinate objects different in sizes, forms, textures; and
more or less of contrast even in the smallest details. Or, if we compare
an Egyptian statue, seated bolt upright on a block, with hands on knees,
fingers parallel, eyes looking straight forward, and the two sides
perfectly symmetrical in every particular, with a statue of the advanced
Greek school or the modern school, which is asymmetrical in respect of
the attitude of the head, the body, the limbs, the arrangement of the
hair, dress, appendages, and in its relations to neighbouring objects,
we shall see the change from the homogeneous to the