curiously and rather clumsily rounded (as in No.  II., [PLATE LXI., Fig. 1]).  The shaft was occasionally patterned.  The capital, in one instance (No.  I., [PLATE LXI., Fig. 3]), approaches to the Corinthian; in another (No.  II.) it reminds us of the Ionic; but the volutes are double, and the upper ones are surmounted by an awkward-looking abacus.  A third (No.  III., [PLATE.  LXI., Fig. 2]) is very peculiar, and to some extent explains the origin of the second.  It consists of two pairs of ibex horns, placed one over the other.  With this maybe compared another (No.  IV.). the most remarkable of all, where we have first a single pair of ibex horns, and then, at the summit, a complete figure of an ibex very graphically portrayed.

[Illustration:  PLATE 61]

The beauty of Assyrian patterning has been already noticed.  Patterned work is found not only on the enamelled bricks, but on stone pavement slabs, and around arched doorways leading from one chamber to another, where the patterns are carved with great care and delicacy upon the alabaster.  The accompanying specimen of a doorway, which is taken from an unpublished drawing by Mr. Boutcher, is very rich and elegant, though it exhibits none but the very commonest of the Assyrian patterns. [PLATE LXII., Fig. 1.] A carving of a more elaborate type, and one presenting even greater delicacy of workmanship, has been given in an earlier portion of this chapter as an example of a patterned pavement slab.  Slabs of this kind have been found in many of the palaces, and well deserve the attention of modern designers.

[Illustration:  PLATE 62]

When the architecture of the Assyrians is compared with that of other nations possessing about the same degree of civilization, the impression that it leaves is perhaps somewhat disappointing.  Vast labor and skill, exquisite finish, the most extraordinary elaboration, were bestowed on edifices so essentially fragile and perishable that no care could have preserved them for manly centuries.  Sun-dried brick, a material but little superior to the natural clay of which it was composed, constituted everywhere the actual fabric, which was then covered thinly and just screened from view by a facing, seldom more than a few inches in depth, of a more enduring and handsomer substance.  The tendency of the platform mounds, as soon as formed, must have been to settle down, to bulge at the sides and become uneven at the top, to burst their stone or brick facings and precipitated them into the ditch below, at the same time disarranging and breaking up the brick pavements which covered their surface.  The weight of the buildings raised upon the monads must have tended to hasten these catastrophes, while the unsteadiness of their foundations and the character of their composition must have soon had the effect of throwing the buildings themselves into disorder, of loosening the slabs from the walls, causing the enamelled bricks to start from their places, the colossal