th a strictly limited function, he
obeyed an imagination over which a sure judgment kept unsleeping watch. His
polychromatic decorations fulfilled their purpose of amusing and delighting
the eye without ever attempting to deceive it. Such is and must always be
the true principle of ornament, and the decorators of the great buildings
of Babylon and Nineveh seem to have thoroughly understood that it was so;
their rich and fertile fancy is governed, in every instance to which we can
point, with unfailing tact, and to them must be given the credit of having
invented not a few of the motives that may yet be traced in the art of the
Medes and Persians, in that of the Syrians, the Phoenicians, the peoples of
Asia Minor, and above all in that of the Greeks--those unrivalled masters
who gave immortality to every artistic combination that they chose to
adopt.

[Illustration: FIG. 142.--Stag, palmette, and rosette; from Layard.]

NOTES:

[326] The cuneiform texts mention the "two bulls at the door of the temple
E-schakil," the famous staged tower of Babylon. Fr. LENORMANT, _Les
Origines de l'Histoire_, vol. i. p. 114 (2nd edition, 1880).

[327] RICH, _Narrative of a Journey to the Site of Babylon in 1811, and a
Memoir on the Ruins_, p. 64. LAYARD, _Discoveries_, p. 507. According to
Rich, this lion was of grey granite; according to Layard, of black basalt.

[328] LOFTUS says nothing of this lion in those _Travels and Researches_
which we have so often quoted. It was, perhaps, on a later occasion that he
found it. We came upon it in a collection of original sketches and
manuscript notes (_Drawings in Babylonia by W. K. Loftus and H. Churchill_)
in the custody of the keeper of Oriental antiquities at the British Museum.
We have to express our acknowledgments to Dr. Birch for permission to make
use of this valuable collection.

[329] PERROT, GUILLAUME ET DELBET, _Exploration archeologique de la
Galatie_, vol. ii. pl. 32.

[330] _Exploration archeologique_, vol. ii. pl. 11.

[331] LAYARD, _Discoveries_, p. 508.

[332] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. ii. pp. 68-70.

[333] This character of a tutelary divinity that we attribute to the winged
bull is indicated in the clearest manner in the cuneiform texts: "In this
palace," says Esarhaddon, "the _sedi_ and _lamassi_ (the Assyrian names for
these colossi) are propitious, are the guardians of my royal promenade and
the rejoicers of my heart, may they ever watch over the palace and never