t
apartments of houses then exhumed, exhibited whimsically designed
wall-decorations, which attracted the attention of Raffaelle and other
artists, who resuscitated and modified the style; adopting it for the
famous Loggie of the Vatican and for garden pavilions or grottoes.

We may safely go back to the earliest era in art for the origin of the
style, if, indeed, the grotesque does not so intimately connect itself
with the primeval art of all countries as to be almost inseparable.
Indeed, it requires a considerable amount of classical education to see
seriously the meaning, that ancient artists desired in all gravity to
express, in works which now excite a smile by their inherent comicality.
Hence the antiquary may be occasionally ruffled by the remarks of some
irreverent spectator, on a work which the former gravely contemplates,
because he feels the design of its maker, and is familiar with the
antique mode of expression. Thus the early Greek figures of Minerva,
whether statues or upon coins, have occasionally an irresistibly
ludicrous expression: but, as art improved, this expression softened,
and ultimately disappeared, the grotesque element taking a more positive
form and walk of its own.

In that cradle of art and science, the ancient land of Egypt, we shall
find grotesque art flourishing in various forms. Their artists did not
scruple to decorate the walls of tombs with pictures of real life, in
which comic satire often peeps forth amid the gravest surroundings. Thus
we find representations of persons at a social gathering evidently the
worse for wine-drinking; or the solemn procession of the funeral boats
interrupted by a ludicrous delineation of the "fouling" or upsetting one
unlucky boat and its crew, which had drifted in the way; while the most
impressive of all scenes, the final judgment of the soul before Osiris,
is depicted at Thebes with the grotesque termination of the forced
return of a wicked soul to earth, under the form of a pig, in a boat
rowed by a couple of monkeys. In the British Museum is a singular
papyrus, upon which are drawn figures of animals performing the actions
of mankind; and among the large number of antiquities which swell the
Egyptian galleries, there are many that exhibit the partiality of this
ancient people for the grotesque.

[Illustration: Figs. 55-58.]

Our first examples consist of a group of wooden boxes and spoons, all of
whimsical form, and selected from the great wor