xxv. 



BRICJK AND STONE. 



It is a curious reflection that the rise and pro- 

 gress of the arts in general, and of arcliitecture in 

 j)articukir, in every country, have been hirgely 

 dependent upon the nature and j)eculiarities of the 

 various materials which each nation found ready 

 to its hand in the immediate neighborhood of its 

 own great towns and cities. Tiius, for example, 

 Egyptian architecture \vas immensely influenced 

 by the granite of Syene, the solid grain of w^iich 

 naturally contributed the massive columns that 

 we all associate with the colossal temples of 

 Thebes and Karnak. So, too, Egyptian sculpture, 

 for the same reason, being mostly hewn from that 

 very rigid and intractable material, displays every- 

 where a stiffness and a want of plasticity nowhere 

 else to be found in the entire statuary of any other 

 civilized people. Clearly, it would have been 

 impossible to carve from solid syenite the out- 

 stretched arm of the Apollo Belvedere or the 

 graceful limbs of the Medici Venus. Hence most 

 Egyptian sculpture is constantly marked by sym- 

 metrical regularity of the two halves of the body; 



276 



