to be an article of toilet use, to contain perhaps kohl or some ointment. It is of a type which is not uncommon also in alabaster or terra-cotta: a man, bending under the weight of a huge vase which he carries on his back, one arm upraised behind him to support it, the other hanging down or resting on his thigh: precisely, in fact, as we see a hammal at his task, in the streets of Cairo to-day, climbing slowly and laboriously the steep ascent to the citadel. It seems to be a portrait from life of some slave, and M. Jean Capart, who describes it (Revue archéol., 4ème série x. 372), points out that the form of the handles of the vase, confined to the eighteenth dynasty, allows us to be precise as to date. Other examples of wood sculpture of all kinds present themselves in profusion. Amongst them a brief reference must be made to the remarkable bas-reliefs on six panels of wood, found by Mariette in a tomb of the third dynasty and now in the Cairo Museum. They are portraits of the deceased, one Hosi, and admitting the conventional method of representation, the head in profile, the body, and even the eye, as if standing full face, the intuitive knowledge of art and the great cleverness of execution are surprising, at such a remote epoch. We are not now, however, endeavouring to follow the history of sculpture in Egypt even in this one branch of the art. Should we do so we should find the two currents already alluded to, the ideal and the real, strongly illustrated. We should discover in the outline pictures on the monuments of what a power of suggestion these early artists were capable. As an example, there is the painter colouring a statue, from Thebes (see Champollion, plate 180). It is the art of leaving out, and we must admit that the latest achievements of the French caricaturist Sem, or our own Nicholson, have their prototypes in these almost prehistoric times. We all see things of this kind with different eyes, and may or may not entirely agree with the observations made by Mr. Flinders Petrie in his History of Egypt. But they are very much to the point. He says: 'The sculptor's work and the painter's show the same sentiment-a rivalry of nature. They did not make a work of art to please the taste as such, but they rivalled nature as closely as possible: the form, the expression, the colouring, the glittering transparent eye, the grave smile, all are copied as if to make an artificial man. The painter mixed his half-tints and his delicate shades and dappled over the animals or figured the feathers of the birds in a manner never attempted in the later ages. The embalmer built up the semblance of the man in resins and cloth over his shrunken corpse to make him as nearly as possible what he was when alive. In each direction man, then, set himself to supplement, to imitate, to rival, or to exceed the works of nature. Art, as the gratification of an artificial taste and standard, was scarcely in existence, but the simplicity, the vastness, the perfection and the beauty of the earliest works, place them on a different level to all works of art and man's device in later ages. They are unique in their splendid power, which no self-conscious civilization has ever rivalled, or can hope to rival, and in their enduring greatness they may last till all the feebler works of man have perished.' We are led, then, if only by the consideration of the few examples of the art of wood sculpture which limitations of space permit us to pass in review, to questions of very great interest. But with regard to these questions no certain answer is forthcoming. Hypotheses and theories are not wanting, it is true, but we can come to no definite conclusion. It would appear that at a time so remote as the period of the fourth dynasty-shall we say four thousand years before Christ? the civilization of Egypt had arrived at its highest point, and that perhaps another four thousand years had passed during which the progress of this civilization and the evolution of the arts had been going on. It would appear, also, that the earliest works of art of which we have any knowledge are, as Mariette has said, fine in themselves and no less fine if compared with the work of dynasties which are supposed to represent the most flourishing ages of Egypt. The most striking feature of this earliest art is its intense realism: the understanding of and fidelity to nature even when conventionally expressed. It would appear, further, that, at the beginnings of the fourth dynasty, art was dependent on and strongly influenced by religion, its ceremonies and hieratism. As in the west, thousands of years later, all art was religious art, at least in an extended sense. We cannot, however, be certain that we are in possession, now, of the finest art of all. There may yet be in store for us, to be revealed by further discoveries, still greater surprises. So far as we can judge at the present time the earlier the art, the greater are the evidences of refinement, whether from instinct, from a long process of training or imported by some conquering race, we know not. And, further, that somewhere about the time when documents become abundant, there was a period of decadence forming a temporary break. The remains of ancient Greek or Roman art in wood which have come down to us are so few that hardly more than a bare reference can be made to them. No doubt the earliest attempts in the awakening civilizations of these peoples were, as elsewhere, rude resemblances to the human figure. The beginnings of art of this kind have always followed a like tendency: something more in the nature of a representative symbol than an effort to reproduce an actual likeness. Beauty, for the pleasure it might give, was not thought of. So far as our knowledge goes, the extreme archaicism of the early Hellenic religious sculptures was intentional. The national museum at Naples possesses a wooden image of Diana which sums up the retention of this deliberately intended. feeling. It has been called the 'Diana of the archaic smile. And, amongst other rare examples, is a seated statuette, in wood, of a goddess with a child on her lap, which was found about 1872 in a tomb at Troussepoil, in Vendée. The group, nearly three feet in height, in attitude and expression and draperies, bears a remarkable resemblance to the Madonna statuettes of the Romanesque period, and perhaps explains the legends of miraculous images found from time to time (see Mélanges archéologiques, 1885). In this connexion a passing reference may be made to the groups of Isis and Horus, of which an interesting example in ivory -so like wood that it is not easy to say whether it is so or not-is in the Egyptian gallery of the British Museum. CHAPTER II WOOD SCULPTURE IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES ΤΗ AND LATER HE perishable nature of wood has already been noticed. If we may add to this its small intrinsic value, the want of consideration from which decorative work of any kind must suffer as fashions change, and the recurring vandalism which seems to be a law of nature, it is' not surprising that our information concerning the art of sculpture in wood, even of our own early era, should be so scanty. In the turbulent times of which we know so little, excepting that men's chief occupations were strife and tumult-in the Dark Ages as we call them—the goods of the Church were the only ones respected, and even these suffered. Some ivories have come down to us perhaps because they could be turned neither into money nor fuel. But wood-it was burnt or left to kick about in garrets as fashions changed, to become worm-eaten, rotten, and powdered! Even in the most recent times, many of us can remember how the to-day so highly prized Chippendale furniture could be bought for a song, and was considered fit only for the nursery or the attic. Such a thing as an example of Norman furniture could not be found in England, and anything earlier than the thirteenth century is of extreme rarity. We do not even know the name of a single English furniture-maker or carver of Elizabeth's time. In England, in France, in the Netherlands, revolutionary and reformation troubles caused destructions of |