ESTHETIC EVOLUTION IN MAN. 349 



Herbert Spencer in his "Ceremonial Institutions" that I need not 

 dwell upon them further here. But a few words as to later and more 

 developed stages may not be out of place. Architecture is the central 

 royal art, and its first object is to " beautify the house of the king." 

 Beginning with the regal hut, it goes on to the frail and gilded palaces 

 of China and Burmah, the house of cedar which King Solomon builded, 

 the vast piles of brick erected by Assyrians and Babylonians in the al- 

 luvial valley of the Euphrates, the solid granite colonnades of Thebes 

 and Memphis, the huge marble domes of Agra and Delhi, the stucco 

 monstrosities of Mohammedan Lucknow, Sculpture first grows up as 

 the handmaid of architecture, and begins its modern form with the bas- 

 reliefs of Egypt and Assyria, or the rock-hewn colossi of Elephanta. 

 We still see the conjunction between royalty and these two sister arts in 

 the beautiful Renaissance f a9ade of the Louvre and the tasteless gilding 

 of the Albert Memorial. Beside the ancient Nile or in the courtyards 

 of Nineveh, we find the subjects ever the same the king conquering 

 his enemies ; the king hunting and slaying a lion ; the king driving a 

 herd of naked captives to his capital city. Thus the aggrandizement 

 of royalty becomes at the same time the opportunity for the exercise 

 and development of plastic skill, w^hile it affords models of the beauti- 

 ful in art for the admiration and the festhetic education of the subject 



thronsr. 



Similarly with painting. Beginning with the rude decoration of 

 the savage cloak and girdle, it advances to the smearing and gilding 

 of the royal hut. Thence it progresses to the brilliant coloration of 

 Egyptian columns and frescoes, and to all the Memphian wealth of 

 blue, green, crimson, and gold with which so many modern restorations 

 have made us familiar. In India, debarred from imitation by Moslem 

 restrictions, it produces the exquisite decoration of the Taj and the 

 Delhi palaces : in western Islam, it gives us the gorgeous Moresque 

 tracery of the Alhambra. In its regular European development, 

 becoming mainly ecclesiastical during the early middle ages, it re- 

 asserts its original governmental connection in the palaces of Florence 

 and Venice, in the Vatican, in the Louvre and the Luxembourg, in 

 Whitehall and Hampton Court, in Dresden and Munich, in modern 

 Berlin and St. Petersburg. S5vres and Gobelins were originally royal 

 factories : Giotto, Michael Angelo, Raphael, Holbein, Rubens, Van- 

 dyke, all produced their masterpieces for poiDcs or kings Leo X, 

 Henri IV, Charles I. Conversely, American artists have often noted 

 the chilling effect of the want of a court upon the aesthetic susceptibili- 

 ties and creativeness of their countrymen generally. Europe has, on 

 the whole, purchased its art at the hard price of its long apprentice- 

 ship to despotism. In India, native art has steadily died out with the 

 gradual extinction of the native courts. In Hellas and Italy it happily 

 survived royalty because pressed into the double service of religion 

 and of the sovereign people in its corporate capacity. What the 



