e work of nature.

[Illustration: FIG. 36.--Haman, in Lower Chaldaea. From Loftus.]

When the king and his architect had finished one of these structures, they
might calculate upon an infinite duration for it without any great
presumption, and that partly because Chaldaean art, even when most ambitious
and enterprising, never made use of any but the simplest means. The arch
was in more frequent use than in Egypt, but it hardly seems to have been
employed in buildings to which any great height was to be given. Scarcely a
trace of it is to be discovered either in the parts preserved of these
structures or in their sculptured representations. None of those light and
graceful methods of construction that charm and excite the eye, but must be
paid for by a certain loss of stability, are to be found here. Straight
lines are the inflexible rule. The few arches that may be discovered in the
interior exercise no thrust, surrounded as they are on every side by
weighty masses. In theory the equilibrium is perfect; and if, as the event
has proved, the conditions of stability, or at least of duration, were less
favourable than in the pyramids at Memphis or in the temples at Thebes, the
fault lies with the inherent vices of the material used and with the
comparatively unfavourable climate.

* * * * *

In the absence of stone the Chaldaean builder was shut off from many of the
most convenient methods of covering, and therefore of multiplying, voids.
Speaking generally, we may say that he employed neither _piers_, nor
_columns_, nor those beams of limestone, sandstone, or granite, which we
know as _architraves_; he was, therefore, ignorant of the _portico_, and
never found himself driven by artistic necessities to those ingenious,
delicate, and learned efforts of invention by which the Egyptians and
Greeks arrived at what we call _orders_. This term is well understood. By
it we mean supports of which the principal parts, base, shaft, and capital,
have certain constant and closely defined mutual relations. Like a
zoological species, each order has a distinctive character and personal
physiognomy of its own. An art that is deprived of such a resource is
condemned to a real inferiority. It may cover every surface with the luxury
of a sumptuous decoration, but, in spite of all its efforts, a secret
poverty, a want of genius and invention, will be visible in its creations.

The varied arrangements of the po