ASSYRIAN MONUiMENTS. 175 



standard, and it seems out of all proportion to the 

 configuration of the monument. Had the designer some 

 otJier idea in his mind, beyond mere ornamentation ? 

 some superstitious notion connected with this symbol ? 

 Novv-a-days we hoist the Royal Standard, or the Union 

 Jack, on the topmost part of a public building ; this 

 would seem of some similar significance. I cannot, 

 however, answer the question I put. The symbol is 

 there, nevertheless, in all its prominence. The reader 

 can judge for himself. 



When once a thing has been transformed into another 

 thing in the imagination of an artist, this other thing 

 will again suggest many objects, which will become 

 more and more estranged from the original model, so 

 that eventually it will not be easy to make out where 

 the last suggestion really came from. 



In all these transformations which we are endeavour- 

 ing to interpret, we should never forget that there are 

 the artists' poetic visions at the back of them all, acting 

 as factors in the chain of modifications.' 



Different minds naturally bring a different bias in 

 the endeavour to interpret these obscure fancies of the 

 ancients. To quote an example, Count d'Alviella, on 

 pi. v, fig. b, shows two Assyrian figures before a con- 

 ventional tree. In one hand they hold a ' key of life.' 



1 The difficulty is often to disentangle from the thing itself the factor of the 

 artist's imajrination. 



