THOSE personal predilections and idiosyncrasies which we each possess, those differences of temper and qualities of perception which affect our sense of colour and form, which account for those variations of treatment in the rendering, in design or drawing, of the same objects by different persons—what are these and whence do they come? They belong to the very constitution of our minds and bodies; they are beyond our own control, and beyond almost our own consciousness, oftentimes. They belong to our progenitors and ancestors perhaps as much as to ourselves, and are lost in the broken records of past family histories; we can only say that certain forms and colours appear so and so to our eyes, that we delight in some more than others—because we are made that way. Such indications of character and preferences are generally traceable, where clues and records exist, to the race, or mixture of races from which we have sprung. We attribute, for instance, certain imaginative faculties to our Celtic origin; certain calculating and analytical capacities to Teutonic sources; while as a mixed race we call ourselves Anglo-Saxon, and as such are supposed to be especially distinguished by practicality, the racial type gradually, in the process of time, being formed by the collective action of such small individual characteristics—somewhat as great geological deposits, such as our chalk hills, have been formed by the gradual accumulation and aggregation of the minute shells of minuter marine creatures.

These typical racial characteristics in art—these preferences in colour, form, pattern, treatment, sentiment, and idea, have left their marks upon the history of art, which indeed becomes, finally, the only history of races—the only record left of peoples to tell us of their intimate life, their hopes and fears, their struggles and their aspirations, so that a scrap of wall-painting, a fragment of an incised slab, a piece of broken pottery, a weapon of bronze, or a jewel, become in course of time full of significance—eloquent books of the life of peoples and powers long ago covered by the drifting sands of time.

The desire to record and to perpetuate seems to have stimulated the primitive artistic instinct in all races; and, indeed, it may still be said to be a living factor and motive in art production.

Each race seeks an image of itself (as every individual desires a portrait), and strives to put in imperishable form the character of its own life, and the ideas or ideals dearest to it. Thus, the prehistoric hunter left images of the animals he hunted, and his hunting reminiscences, scratched upon bones and smooth slates and stones; much as the Assyrian kings, in a more elaborate way, having the resources of a powerful civilization at command, loved to have recorded on sculptured slabs, lining their palaces, their prowess in arms and the chase; more especially as hunters and slayers of lions, though in their case the lion hunting was done in a more luxurious modern way, the animals being driven into special inclosures, and let loose on purpose to be slain by the king and his men—a system of a piece with the generally tyrannical and cruel methods of despotic persons. Still, no doubt, there was considerably more risk and danger involved than in a modern battue in a pheasant cover—barring the chance of being shot by your neighbour's gun.

Certainly the general tenor of the story told in ancient Asiatic art is that of the conqueror's triumphs, of the strong overcoming the weak, the glorification of kings and warriors in battle, of beleaguered cities, and the carrying away of captives and spoils. No doubt, if this conquering spirit had been absent, if each branch of the great human family had remained within its primitive borders, their art would have presented sharper and more distinct contrasts, while remaining simple in character. It is the restless, exploring, conquering, acquisitive spirit which mixes and blends elements originally distinct—well, it may be it also acts as the stormy wind that scatters the winged seeds of design and, bearing them to new soils, produces new varieties.

It is difficult, of course, to disentangle the strictly racial characteristics in art entirely from those other strong influences which, in fact, may be said to have helped in their formation—the influence of climate, habit, and local materials, which we have previously touched upon. Yet the purely human element appears to come in, and the final form which art takes among a people must bear the stamp of individual choice as well as of collective sentiment and climatic influence.

In primitive communities, however, the individual is less apparent than the collective racial influence. The forms of art are typical and symbolical rather than imitative or graphic. The great Asiatic races of antiquity, to judge from the remains of their monuments, the palaces of their kings, and their temples and tombs, adopted certain typical methods of representation which, in the case of the ancient Egyptians, became, in association with a strictly ordered and carefully organized social existence under an elaborate religious system and ritual, actual forms of language and record in the hieroglyphic. These consisted of certain abstract representations of familiar forms and figures inclosed in a kind of cartouche, incised upon stone walls, or stamped upon plaster and filled with colour.

The lotus flower served as a symbol of the annual overflow of the Nile (at the summer solstice) so important to the Egyptians; the ram and the sun symbolized Amru-Ra, the king of all gods; other animals, with and without wings, the cat, the dog, the sparrow-hawk for the soul, the beetle (scarabÆus) for creative energy, generation and perpetuation of life, the snake for continuity of time, etc.; and even differently arranged lines, the zigzag for water, the circle, square, waved line, spiral, labyrinth, etc., betokened the divine and secretly-working powers of nature.

Such forms inclosed in cartouches massed together, sometimes in horizontal lines, sometimes in vertical, formed a striking wall decoration in themselves. A wonderful pitch of abstract yet exact characterization of natural form was reached by very simple means in this picture-writing. The birds especially are remarkable for their truth. Every object had to be clearly defined so as to be recognized at once and easily deciphered. The profile view of an object is always the most characteristic and typical, and lends itself best to a system of representation where all objects are on the same plane. So the glyphic artist kept strictly to profile.

Love of typical form, definite outline and mass, flat and vivid coloration—these are always characteristic of ancient Egyptian art, even when, as during the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, a freer style and greater naturalism is apparent in their portrait sculpture and wall-paintings.

The love of clearness of statement and their conception of art, as in the nature of a decorative record, seems to be emphatically expressed in their ways of representation. For instance, in painting an altar piled with offerings they give the altar front in elevation, but the offerings, in order that each and all should be seen drawn in profile, are arranged in ground plan. Thus we may say that their statements were pictures, their pictures were statements.

There is a wall-painting in the British Museum showing a fish pond or tank in a garden, surrounded by trees. The inclosed water is rendered by a flat tint of pale blue, with horizontal zigzag lines in a second tint across it. Lotus flowers and buds spring vertically from it, and on its surface ducks and fish are painted in profile. The trees are painted on the upper side and ends with their stems springing from the edge of the pond; but the row of trees on the near side grows with the tops towards the water; while the row at each end sprouts outward. The whole forms a very pretty piece of ornament, and would embroider well for a table-cloth centre, or lend itself to a treatment for a mosaic floor. Note the way in which the trees alternate (apple trees and date palms), and the grouping of the ducks and the fish alternating with the lotus flower. It is freely painted with direct brush touches on the white plaster.

In the ornamental treatment of tree forms all the eastern races seem to have excelled. Trees have always been associated with religious belief, and have had mystical and symbolical significance—as the tree of the garden of Genesis, the tree of life, and the fatal tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Trees, too, were man's first shelter and dwelling; no wonder a race descended from arboreal ancestors should revere them and hold them sacred.

It is interesting to compare this Egyptian rendering of the date palm tree with an Assyrian rendering of the same tree, though the latter is sculptured; or, again, with the GrÆco-Roman version at the house of Icarius. The typical and sacred tree with the Assyrians, however, was the tree of life, which became with them a formal piece of ornament. In it we seem to see, too, the original form of a type of ornament constantly recurring in the art of all the Asiatic races, and which was apparently carried by them, or from them, into Europe; reappearing in Persian, Greek, Roman, and Renascence work in all manner of variations, remaining a typical horizontal border motive to our own day.

The lotus appears in sculptured Assyrian pavements on the outer border, the open flowers alternating with the buds, as in Egyptian work. Then we have another typical and constantly recurring border motive in the rosette, which has a rich and sumptuous effect, closely filled in this way. Then comes in the palmette, or tree of life, while the centre filling, a network formed of a six-petalled flower form, again recalls the suggested textile origin of the ornamental motive of the whole, to which I have before alluded.

Other interesting and characteristic renderings of flowers and trees may be found in bas-relief upon the Assyrian alabaster slabs used as wall decorations, such as those showing the vine, the fig, the lily, and the daisy here given, the sculpture of which, in general, is remarkable not only for the combination of great power of expression and energy of action with a very dominant formalizing and ornamental and typical treatment of form, but also for great delicacy of chiselling; in one slab there is a small figure of a king in his chariot, inclosed within larger work, as finely cut almost as a gem or seal. Note, as illustrating the ornamental treatment of animal forms, so characteristic of these Assyrian or Semitic sculptures, the way the lions are carved, the masses of the hair of the manes carefully marked and ornamentally designed, the muscular lines of the face emphasized in the same ornamental manner. The result is a typical lion, stately, monumental, sculptural, and decorative, yet in no way wanting in energy of action, character, and vigour.

Nothing could be more different in spirit and style from the ordinary modern European sculptor's treatment. The Assyrian grasped the essential leonine character, but expressed it in typical and ornamental terms. The modern English, French, German, or Italian generally seeks a naturalism which struggles to escape from the conditions of the material; he seeks accidents rather than essentials, and, in his horror of formalism, tries to treat the masses of hair and mane as if he wielded the painter's brush rather than the sculptor's chisel—though it is generally modelled in clay first before it is carved. The result is loss of dignity, typical character, and monumental feeling. Alfred Stevens saw the importance of a certain formalism, and his little lion on the uprights of the outer railing of the British Museum remains unequalled, so far as I know, in modern work.8

The Hellenic race, the Greeks, whose art has had, and still possesses, such an influence over that of the modern world, while in their archaic period differing little in method of treatment and in use of ornament from the Asiatic races, the Assyrian and Egyptian and Persian, the elements of each of which they seemed to fuse and adapt, gradually developed a freer style, and, while never losing their monumental sense in sculpture, carried the human figure in sculpture to the greatest pitch of perfection. Their invention in purely ornamental forms was not conspicuous, nor was it needed, since they treated the human figure as their chief element in decoration. Their leading ornamental types may be traced to Asiatic prototypes—the palmette and the rosette, for instance. The scroll, perhaps, they may particularly claim to have developed, and the anthemion, from their primitive types.

This latter type of ornament, so generally used by the Greeks as a crest or crown upon their upright obelisk-like tombstones or steles, or to crest the angles of the pediments of their temples, is suggestive in its general form of a flame, or pair of wings.

It is noteworthy that a similar form occurs, treated in detail in a variety of ways, as a glory or halo placed behind Buddhist images made in ancient India, Japan, and Burmah, often in carved wood and gilt metal or bronze, pierced and ornamented in a variety of ways—sometimes suggesting leafy trees, but generally radiating in their principal lines from a centre, like the anthemion. The flame was a sacred symbol with many ancient peoples, and it remains with us as the fitting emblem of inspiration.

The gilded, almond-shaped glory inclosing the figure of the Virgin and of Christ in Gothic painting and sculpture seems to be another form of the same emblem, and a similar form is common in all Persian and Eastern ornament design. It generally appears as a kind of fruit or many-petaled flower, or flower and fruit combined. I am inclined to think that it may have originally had a religious significance associated with fire or life,9 while its beauty of contour and adaptability in decoration of all kinds were sufficient to perpetuate it even if the original meaning were lost. If the Persians invented it, it might have had some reference to their own primitive fire-worship, while with the Arabs, and wherever the faith of Mohammed spread, it would still be significant of the prophetic fire, and it is certainly universally found in the ornament of Mohammedan countries. We might trace it back to its primitive form in the Assyrian tree of life, and this on the face of it seems its most likely source; and we find it in Persian work definitely taking the pomegranate form within the rayed leaves. The rayed flower or leaf form curiously reappears in a late Celtic cross in Argyllshire, in association with the characteristic knotted work, a kind of tree form, and filling of pattern carved in the stone and culminating in the cross.

Whatever race may really claim its invention or first effective use, it appeals now universally to the ornamental sense, and has become the common property of designers, who do not usually disturb themselves with the question whether they have stolen a fruit from the tree of life, or sacred fire from an unknown hearth, so long as they can fill a space effectively or make an attractive and adaptable design.

Another form, now no less universal, is probably Persian in origin, although it has found a settled home in India—I mean what is known as the Indian palmette, so familiar to designers for Manchester calico prints.

I am told by Mr. Purdon Clarke that this palm shape denotes benison or blessing, or a message of goodwill of some kind. This answers to the symbolical meaning of the palm in the Bible, as carried by benign and holy persons and angels. Here would be a symbolical reason for its longevity in ornament, as it would naturally commend itself to an eastern race in a sun-burnt land, to whom the suggestion of shady palms would always be grateful. But here, again, the beauty of its contour appeals to the ornamentist on independent grounds. He values it for its graceful mass in a pattern, for its bold and sweeping curves, for its value as an inclosing form for small floral fittings.

To the Persian and Hindu designers, with their exquisite and subtle sense of ornament, with their passion for elaborate intricacy, such a form as this is utilized to its utmost capacity, both in counter-balancing and superimposed masses upon flowery fields, and as inclosures for smaller fields of pattern; while the abundant flora of their spring-time blossoms in a new and translated existence in their richly patterned printed and woven textiles, and in the carved ornament of their buildings.

The influence in Arabic ornament of the Mohammedan faith, too, in forbidding the representation of living forms, turned the ingenuity and invention of the Arabic and Eastern designer in a purely ornamental direction, and as a result we get extremely elaborate patterns, either purely geometric, or filling the interstices of a geometric framework in inlays and carved and pierced work. These patterns from the pulpit of a mosque at Cairo, now in the South Kensington Museum, work of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, show how fine and delicate Arabic ornament became. We may note the star-shape formed by the intersection of the lines. The star is an emblem of the Deity (Allah).

The plateaus and slopes of the Himalayas, which are the northern mountainous boundary of India, were supposed to be the cradle of that great wandering, colonizing, adaptive, speculative, and organizing race, the Aryans, from which we Western people, according to one theory, have sprung, dispersing over the world, and settling in different countries and climates. The race has greatly differentiated in speech, customs, and forms of art; and yet through them all it is rather differences in similarities, or similarities in differences, that we trace.

Latin, Teutonic, Celtic, suggest great divergences both in spirit and form, yet perhaps the correspondences are more frequent than the divergences. When we see how greatly members of the same family differ from one another in tastes and habits, can we wonder that members of the greater human family should be so different in tastes and habits, under different skies and conditions of life?

When we turn further east the difference seems greater, the gaps larger. The Mongolian race seems further apart and suggests a remoter antiquity. Their geographical remoteness and their persistent adhesion to their ancient customs seem to have fixed more or less of a gulf between them and the western peoples, and there is a corresponding contrast in the forms of their art. It is familiar, and yet remains strange; it has been constantly imported amongst us, and has more than once influenced European fashions in decorative design, as in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries through the Dutch, and in the last century in England in Chippendale furniture and porcelain, while China has given its name to the finer ware of the modern potter, of which it taught him the secret. To this day the willow pattern in blue upon plates and dishes, with its Chinese legend, scenery, and personages, remains a popular pattern, wonderfully little changed by its English translator. All the typical characteristics are found in its details, the typical Chinese house raised upon its first story of stone—with its bamboo trellises and quaintly curved tiled roof. The Chinese dragon remains a distinct breed, influencing here and there the form of the mythical beasts in design of other races, such as the Persian and Indian, but remaining as characteristically Chinese itself as the Pagoda.

The love of trellis-like backgrounds and diagonal diapers for floral designs is a very marked feature with the Chinese designer, and it suggests the native fantastic and ingenious bamboo constructions used in the framing and panelling of their dwellings and temples, dominated by that distinct love of quaintness and queerness which seems a part of the artistic sense in the yellow race, and is as marked as their love of bright colour and emphatic pattern.

Their formidable neighbours, relations, and rivals, the Japanese, exhibit in the art up to a certain stage much the same qualities and influences, their art indicating a gradual transformation in style from the primitive mythical and religious and symbolical towards the more domestic, familiar, and naturalistic. But before coming into contact with European forms of art they began to develop a naturalistic feeling in their art which in the present century has become the dominant note, and, joined with a certain inventive quaintness and ornamental reserve, has had so tremendous an influence upon the art of Europe, more especially modern French art.

Only about forty or fifty years ago Japan was practically in a mediÆval condition, its arts and handicrafts in a most fertile and flourishing condition of living traditions; but that very quickness and alertness, that receptivity and artistic impressionableness which has enabled them to produce such a mass of wonderful work in so many branches of cunning craftsmanship, have exposed them to the modern European influences, which, however they may have, in the process of rapid assimilation, contributed to their material power as a nation in the modern capitalistic and industrial sense, have had most disastrous commercializing and deteriorating effects upon Japanese art and handicraft, leading to hasty work and cheap and gaudy production—merely to catch the demand.

Artistic and racial traditions, however, die hard. Even in Western Europe, in constant intercourse and intercommunication as we now are, and while international influence tends to soften and blend racial differences, and social relations to mix them, elements which differentiate the Teuton from the Latin, the Celt from the Saxon, still survive. In the process of the adoption of even the same ideas each race, each nation, gives a different interpretation to them, just as different individuals will give a different interpretation in drawing from the same model. The character is not changed by the new dress, and the dress becomes influenced by the wearer. Thus, in adopting ideas and forms of art, a new direction or character is developed owing to the racial instincts of the people adopting them.

German Renascence work, for instance, may be full of details, the forms of which come from Italy or Greece, but the combination and treatment, the application of them, become characteristically German—characteristically full of detail, and fantastic, with a tendency to be overloaded and restless, like their Gothic work. Such variations of the same type among different peoples may be likened to the variations of language in the same country, where the same language is spoken, but with a different accent.

It is this difference of accent now, under our complex modern life, which makes the chief difference in forms of art, and which betrays racial influence. The actual systems of building pattern, of pattern forms, methods of drawing and modelling figures, and the various handicrafts have all been discovered long ago, but it is in their recombination and adaptation—our interpretation and use of them, and in the power of variation and expression, that modern invention and predilection tell.

It would be interesting to endeavour to symbolize the fundamental racial characteristics and preferences by certain typical forms and colours in procession.

The races inhabiting the warm countries, southern and eastern, would be distinguished by emphatic contrasting colours and patterns. Just as the tiger owes his barred coat to his habit of hiding in coverts and jungles, where the bright sunlight falls through the tall grasses and palms in stripes; so where the contrast of light and shade is so sharp as in Africa, there appears to be a deeply-rooted preference for barred colours and striped patterns among the dark race, which they have carried with them to America, and which curiously reappears as a necessary part of the equipment of the sham Ethiopian serenader in our streets.

The black and white or red and white barred courses characteristic of Arabian and Moorish architecture have been alluded to before, and, though they have been used in other countries, they always suggest the country which seems to have given them birth.

Supposing, then, we wanted to express in a typical symbolical way the racial preferences and characteristics in ornamental art, a black and white barred shield and a palm might be appropriate pattern emblems for the African or the Moor; while the Egyptian would naturally bear a lotus and a scarabÆus, with a winged globe for a standard; the Assyrian a tree of life; the Persian would bear the flame-shaped flower, and the device of Ormuzd and Ahrimanes contending for the mastery; the Indian would carry the palmette and a peacock, and would share with the Arab the geometric star-form and richly floriated robes; the Chinese would show the dragon blazon, and carry the peony; the Japanese the red disk of the rising sun, and a bough of plum blossom; the Turanian the crescent and the star; the Greek the anthemion, and the figure of Pallas Athene; the Roman an eagle standard, and an image of Mars; the Scandinavian a raven, and a runic knot. These might represent the ancient world of art. The modern and western races it would be more difficult to symbolize in so primitive and typical a manner, since all of them have borrowed so largely from the ancient sources, and are themselves composed of such mixed and complex elements.

Italian art could only be represented by a fusion of most of the foregoing elements and types, and would require a crowd of distinguished retainers in architecture, sculpture, painting, and all the arts of design; but perhaps she might bear a typical classical scroll for a standard, as the typical designer of that form of ornament in so many varieties, from Roman times downwards, that Italy may be said to have made the scroll form essentially her own.

Germany might follow, great in bold and brave heraldry, or with a Gothic accent in richly-scrolled mantling, and a redundant display of Renascence ornament.

France, as a more volatile Pallas Athene, might, perhaps, bear the wavering lamp of executive and imitative skill, and dramatic instinct in design.

Spain would look coquettishly under a fan, wrapped in faded embroidery, bearing the Alhambra, like a pendent jewel: while for England, what artistic emblems are left? Well, we have been described as inveterate colonists, even in art. We can only make up in a fancy costume of historic patchwork, beginning with fragments of Roman mosaic pavement, by way of sandals, Saxon and Norman hose, Gothic surcoat and body armour, a classical cloak, and a Victorian Queen Anne gable by way of headgear, and perhaps a banner of eclectic wall-paper or printed cotton.

For all that, and perhaps because of it in some measure—did we take art seriously as a nation, and make it really a natural and essential part of our life, as it is its final expression; should we determine to set our house in order, and make England again "merrie," strong in her own borders, self-supporting, and self-reliant, not suffering the natural beauty of our land or our historic monuments to be ruthlessly defaced, in the supposed interests of trade; putting our trust in the capacity of the people, rather than in the multiplication of machines; uniting hand and brain in our work, thinking more of the ends of life and less of the means, when the means of an ample, simple life shall be within the reach of every citizen, then, well—then we might fairly expect to win the palm of life, as of art, without despoiling the African.