Secondly, there is an indication that in certain countries immediately bordering on Assyria endeavors were made from time to time to centralize and consolidate the empire, by substituting, on fit occasions, for the native chiefs, Assyrian officers as governors.  The persons appointed are of two classes—­“collectors” and “treasurers.”  Their special business is, of course, as their names imply, to gather in the tribute due to the Great King, and secure its safe transmission to the capital; but they seem to have been, at least in some instances, entrusted with the civil government of their respective districts.  It does not appear that this system was ever extended very far, Lebanon on the west, and Mount Zagros on the east, may be regarded as the extreme limits of the centralized Assyria.  Armenia, Media, Babylonia, Susiana, most of Phoenicia, Palestine, Philistia, retained to the last their native monarchs; and thus Assyria, despite the feature here noticed, kept upon the whole her character of a “kingdom-empire.”

The civilization of the Assyrians is a large subject, on which former chapters of this work have, it is hoped, thrown some light, and upon which only a very few remarks will be here offered by way of recapitulation.  Deriving originally letters and the elements of learning from Babylonia, the Assyrians appear to have been content with the knowledge thus obtained, and neither in literature nor in science to have progressed much beyond their instructors.  The heavy incubus of a dead language lay upon all those who desired to devote themselves to scientific pursuits; and, owing to this, knowledge tended to become the exclusive possession of a learned or perhaps a priest class, which did not aim at progress, but was satisfied to hand on the traditions of former ages.  To understand the genius of the Assyrian people we must look to their art and their manufactures.  These are in the main probably of native growth; and from them we may best gather an impression of the national character.  They show us a patient, laborious, pains-taking people, with more appreciation of the useful than the ornamental, and of the actual than the ideal.  Architecture, the only one of the fine arts which is essentially useful, forms their chief glory; sculpture, and still more painting, are subsidiary to it.  Again, it is the most useful edifice—­the palace or house—­whereon attention is concentrated—­the temple and the tomb, the interest attaching to which is ideal and spiritual, are secondary, and appear (so far as they appear at all) simply as appendages of the palace.  In the sculpture it is the actual the historically true—­which the artist strives to represent.  Unless in the case of a few mythic figures connected with the religion of the country, there is nothing in the Assyrian bas-reliefs which is not imitated from nature.  The imitation is always laborious, and often most accurate and exact.  The laws of representation, as we understand them,