  | CHAPTER I. | | PROLEGOMENA. | | PAGE | | The phenomena of destruction and combination in Nature?—?The difference between the sublime and beautiful?—?Without man no beauty?—?Science, industry, and art?—?The utilitarian principle?—?Choice?—?The realistic, historical, and critical points of view in art?—?Crystallisations and their elements?—?Symmetry and eurythmy?—?Proportion, action, and expression?—?Man is the symbol of earthly perfection | 1 | | CHAPTER II. | | ETHNOLOGY IN ITS BEARING ON ART. | | The Negro, the Turanian, and the Aryan: their characteristics, facial angle, amount of brain, and artistic capacities?—?Space and time?—?Art treated historically?—?Pottery in its development?—?Generalisation and its advantage | 22 | | CHAPTER III. | | PRE-HISTORIC AND SAVAGE ART. | | Traces of man’s inventive and decorative force in by-gone ages?—?Classification of pre-historic products?—?The old stone age?—?The new stone age?—?The bronze and iron ages?—?Man’s first dwellings?—?Houses and temples?—?Lake- or pile-dwellings in their gradual development?—?Cranoges or wooden islands?—?Art in the western hemisphere?—?The stucco in the rock-hewn temple at Mitla in Mexico?—?Difference between art-products in North, Central, and South America?—?Cuzco, near Lake Titicaca?—?Pottery as a reliable historical record?—?The wild and fantastic mode of ornamentation in America, and its causes | 32 | | CHAPTER IV. | | CHINESE ART. | | The Chinese language?—?The holy books of the Chinese?—?The sacred number five?—?Principle of ornamentation?—?Their towns?—?The wall with the Chinese not yet a completing part of the building?—?The enclosure, the frame, and the substructure?—?The trellis-work of the Chinese and its subdivision?—?Their Tshao-pings and Miaos?—?Mode of colouring?—?Silk-weavings and their usual patterns?—?Feather works and embroideries?—?Their deficiencies in painting?—?Their pottery?—?Causes of their failings in art in a higher sense. | 45 | | CHAPTER V. | | INDIA, PERSIA, ASSYRIA, AND BABYLON. | | The Aryans on this and the other side of the HimÂlÂyan Mountains?—?Science and art the offsprings of religion?—?Endeavours to express abstract phenomena in concrete signs?—?The symbolic, dialectic, and mythological periods?—?The Indian trinity?—?The principal divinities of India, and their analogy with the Egyptian, Persian, and Greek gods?—?Indian epic poetry?—?The rock-hewn temples and Buddha?—?Stucco ornamentation?—?Causes of the gorgeousness of Indian art?—?Persia and the Persians?—?Their five cosmical elements?—?Historical development?—?The Zend-Avesta?—?Persepolis and its oldest monuments?—?Zoroaster?—?The Persian trinity?—?Light and darkness?—?Why no temples were constructed?—?The Babylonians and Ninivites?—?Their principles of ornamentation?—?Their wall decorations | 60 | | CHAPTER VI. | | EGYPTIAN ART. | | The sphinx the emblem of Egyptian art?—?Long and short chronologists?—?Lepsius and his list of Egyptian dynasties?—?State of Egypt under Menes, who ruled 3892 B.C., according to Lepsius?—?Division of Egyptian art into periods?—?The forty-two holy books of the Egyptians?—?Their gods of the first, second, and third orders?—?The Egyptian trinity?—?The pyramidal period?—?The hieratic style?—?The Ptolemaic style?—?Their mode of ornamentation and symmetrophobia | 103 | | CHAPTER VII. | | HEBREW ART. | | The Hebrews are a mixed race?—?Social and political condition of the Jews during 6,000 years?—?Description of the country and aspect of nature?—?Rabbi Manasseh Ben Israel?—?Architecture a sure measure of a nation’s social and political development?—?Egotistical character of nomadic traders?—?The temple and palace of Solomon, the only architectural efforts of the Jews?—?Sketch of their history, divided into eight periods?—?The tabernacle a tent?—?The first temple constructed on its plan?—?Ben David on the mysterious empty room above the Holy of Holies?—?Causes why the Jews had no art, and never attempted to have any | 132 | | CHAPTER VIII. | | GREEK ART. | | Meshiah (humanity) was first freed by the Greeks in form, and by Christ in spirit?—?Aspect of nature?—?India, Egypt, and Persia as the component parts of Greek development?—?The different dialects of the Greeks?—?Their mythology?—?Traces of intelligible facts and historical events in the Greek myths?—?Zeus and his character?—?Prometheus and Faust?—?The nine muses and their leader?—?Greek life a continuous festivity?—?Greek poetry and philosophy?—?Greek artistic development?—?The Olympian, Pythian, NemÆan, and Isthmian games?—?Greek architecture: the temple?—?Building materials?—?Site of temples?—?Proportion?—?Plan of temples?—?The Doric, Ionic, and Korinthian orders and their subdivisions?—?The Attic style?—?Greek pottery and Greek sculpture?—?Different periods?—?The British Museum and Greek art?—?Onatas, Ageladas, Kalamis, Pheidias, Praxiteles, Skopas, and Lysippus?—?The Parthenon?—?Aphrodite no longer draped?—?The groups of Niobe, LaokoÖn, and the Farnese bull?—?Causes of the decline of Greek art | 153 | | CHAPTER IX. | | ETRUSKAN ART. | | The first settlers in Etruria?—?Their gods of the first and second orders?—?The ritual of thunder?—?Temples and tombs?—?Subdivision of tombs?—?Cinerary chests?—?Excavations at PrÆneste?—?Pottery and metal works?—?Their style either Archaic or Etruskan?—?Division of Etruskan works of art into five principal categories | 212 | | CHAPTER X. | | R
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