camels, are well portrayed; and in one instance, the foreshortening of a horse, advancing diagonally, is respectably rendered.  In general, Sassanian sculpture, like most delineative art in its infancy, affects merely the profile; but here, and in the overturned horse already described, and again in the Victories which ornament the spandrels of the arch of Chosroes, the mere profile is departed from with good effect, and a power is shown of drawing human and animal figures in front or at an angle.  What is wanting in the entire Sassanian series is idealism, or the notion of elevating the representation in any respects above the object represented; the highest aim of the artist is to be true to nature; in this truthfulness is his triumph; but as he often falls short of his models, his whole result, even at the best, is unsatisfactory and disappointing.

Such must almost necessarily be the sentence of art critics, who judge the productions of this age and nation according to the abstract rules, or the accepted standards, of artistic effort.  But if circumstances of time and country are taken into account, if comparison is limited to earlier and later attempts in the same region, or even in neighboring ones, a very much more favorable judgment will be passed.  The Saseanian reliefs need not on the whole shrink from a comparison with those of the Achaemenian Persians.  If they are ruder and more grotesque, they are also more spirited and more varied; and thus, though they fall short in some respects, still they must be pronounced superior to the Achaemenian in some of the most important artistic qualities.  Nor do they fall greatly behind the earlier, and in many respects admirable, art of the Assyrians.  They are less numerous and cover a lees variety of subjects; they have less delicacy; but they have equal or greater fire.  In the judgment of a traveller not given to extravagant praise, they are, in some cases at any rate, “executed in the most masterly style.”  “I never saw,” observes Sir R. Kerr Porter, “the elephant, the stag, or the boar portrayed with greater truth and spirit.  The attempts at detailed human form are,” he adds, “far inferior.”

Before, however, we assign to the Sassanian monarchs, and to the people whom they governed, the merit of having produced results so worthy of admiration, it becomes necessary to inquire whether there is reason to believe that other than native artists wore employed in their production.  It has been very confidently stated that Chosroes the Second “brought Roman artists” to Takht-i-Bostan, and by their aid eclipsed the glories of his great predecessors, Artaxerxes, son of Babek, and the two Sapors.  Byzantine forms are declared to have been reproduced in the moldings of the Great Arch, and in the Victories.  The lovely tracery of the Mashita Palace is regarded as in the main the work of Greeks and Syrians.06 No doubt it is quite possible that there may be some truth in these allegations; but we must not forget, or let it