ight lead in time to their possessing a school of art which,
being really original, might become the style of the future. The
civilization of Japan is not older than the fifth century A.D., and
was probably then imported from Corea. Some of the earliest specimens
we know of their art are embroidered religious pictures by the son of
a Mikado Sholokutaiski, who was in the seventh century the great
apostle of Buddhism in Japan; and the next earliest works are by the
first nun, Honi, in the eighth century. We have European work as old,
and it is most interesting to compare the differences of their styles
and stitches.

We must now return to the beginning of our era, when we find Greek
taste, such as it was, still influencing and colouring art in Italy,
and throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa, wherever Roman colonies were
founded, till the eighth century. It died hard; but by that time the
barbarians had poured from the east and north in successive waves, and
conquered and suppressed the classical civilization.

Nothing is so puzzling in textile art as the mixture of styles during
the first 1000 years A.D. The Graeco-Roman, the Byzantine, and the
Egyptian, crossed by the Arabian, Persian, and Indian styles, were
reproduced in the Sicilian looms. Certain stock patterns, such as the
reclining hares or fawns, as we find them on the Shishak pall, or that
of the Tree of Life, approached by worshipping men or animals,
originating in Assyrian art, are employed as borders, and fill up
vacant spaces. The information collected from the tombs in the Crimea
immediately preceding our era, is supplemented by the variety in style
and materials from the Fayoum, now placed by Herr Graf'schen in the
Museum at Vienna.

Christian art, which began in Byzantium, gradually grew, and formed
itself into the Gothic,[62] which in time overcame the general chaos
of style.

Eastern art continued to flow westward, modifying and suggesting.
When the Phoenicians and Carthaginians had laid down their ancient
commercial sceptre, it was taken up by the Greeks, and later by the
Venetians and Genoese, always trading with Asiatic goods. Then the
arts of the Scandinavians[63] and of the Celts (who were the weavers),
though barbaric, still retained and spread certain Oriental
traditions. Luxury was born in Babylon, and Persia became its nurse,
whence all its glories and refinements spread over the world. But if
luxury was Babylonian, art was Greek. Alas! the