23 1 ON TASTE IN ORNAMENTAL DESIGN. Paet II. 



is deficient in them ; and many scenes from a Dante, a 

 Milton, a Shakspeare, a Spenser, or other poets, and, above 

 all, from the Bible and Testament, are far superior to any 

 of a classical age. Christian story, as I have already ob- 

 served (p. 200), abounds in feelings of a far more exquisite 

 and exalted kind ; and it is to be regretted that mediaeval 

 sculpture was interfered with by the imitation of Pagan 

 ideas. It is the fault of modern days that the antique is too 

 slavishly copied; and that subjects for which we can have 

 no real feeling are forced upon us, to the discouragement of 

 efforts of independent genius. An ideal figure of youthful 

 beauty must be a nymph ; exquisite form in man or woman 

 must be confined to a heathen deity ; the emblems of death 

 must be Pagan; and that most graceful conception, the 

 angel, must give place to some ancient one, with which we 

 have no kind of sympathy. Natural talent and invention 

 are thus cramped ; and the " servile herd of imitators ex- 

 cite our anger and our ridicule," by an exclusive and affected 

 admiration of some conventional type totally unconnected 

 with their own feelings, or habits of thought.] We should 

 be surprised to find a bas-relief in Greece, representing the 

 legendary history of Osiris, or the victories of an Egyptian 

 Eemeses ; and still more to discover in Egypt a record of the 

 triumph of the Israelites at the Eed Sea. 



Good forms and good patterns may properly be adopted 

 from the works of bygone artists, as hints may be taken from 

 Greek, Moorish, or other styles ; but then the imitation 

 should be made with judgment ; and nothing is more incon- 

 sistent than a copy (generally a caricature) of Arabic sentences, 

 or Egyptian hieroglyphics ; which, appropriate as ornaments 

 when used by those to whom they conveyed some idea, are 

 quite out of place as an English decoration. 



[It is well to contemplate " day and night " the merits of 

 " Greek models," and to comprehend the real sentiments which 



