sentations of it within the larger. In Yarkand carpets, however, it is seen filling the whole centre of the carpet, stark and stiff as if cut out in metal. In Persian art, and in Indian art derived from Persian, the tree becomes a beautiful flowering plant, or simple sprig of flowers; but in Hindu art it remains in its hard architectural form, as seen in temple lamps, and the models in brass and copper of the Sacred Fig as the Tree of Life. On an embroidered Pindari bag it is represented in two forms [Plate I., figs. 1, 3, 4], one like a notched Noah's Ark tree, and the other branched like the temple candelabra. In this bag the cone is represented with the trees.

Neither is it difficult to conjecture how these religious symbols of the first worship of the Aryan race, afterwards darkened and polluted in Turanian India, and Egypt, and Assyria, by a monstrous and obscene symbolism, came to be universally adopted in the art ornament of the East. It originated in the embroidered hangings and veils worked by women for the temples, which they embroidered with the representation of the symbol of the deity worshiped.

The women "who wove hangings for the grove," or Asherah, are alluded to in 2 Kings xxiii. 7. They probably embroidered on cut patterns, and worked the larger patterns in appliqué into their work; and they cut the patterns by folding the cloth double, so as by one undulating or zig-zag cut to get a two sided symmetrical pattern. Nor is this entirely conjecture. This method is everywhere practised among the artistic peasantry of Europe. I have a number of such patterns, which I once saw a French peasant boy cutting out in paper, to wile away the time. It happens that they are all of trees, some cypresses, and others trees with the cross introduced in the most strange conventional manner about them, trees, in fact, of life and death. The method of cutting out patterns in this way tends to perpetuate a symmetrical and rectangular representation of ornament. The Noah's Arklike tree, on the Pindari bag [Plate I., fig. 3], is certainly derived from a bit of paper or cloth folded and cut crossways and then notched. Be this as it may, the knop and flower pattern, and the Tree of Life pattern pervade all decorative art, and by direct derivation from the Assyrian lotus and lotus bud, and Asherah and cone, but no longer as symbols. This absence of symbolism is the weakness of modern European decoration, as indeed it was of Grecian; and yet what conventional form is more beautiful than the French Fleur-de-lis, more beautiful and worshipful than the Tudor Rose, or than such heraldic symbols as the cross crosslet; and the most natural decoration for wall papers, curtains, and book lining papers, would be, for people who could afford it, to use family arms, alone, or in combination with national symbols, and conventionalised representations of national flowers or animals. But no symbols can approach in beauty of form and meaning to the knop and flower, and the Hom of Assyria, and, purified of all local taint of Asshur, Ashtoreth or Astarte, they belong to all the Aryan races in the old world and the new.

The history of mankind is in its direct impulses the history of surplus populations in search of food; but wherever men have been able to rest, and to found civil and political organisations, they have raised up testimony to the truth that man shall not live by bread alone. We find it figured everywhere in Oriental art, and we cannot take up a talisman of Egypt, an engraved gem of Assyria, a Syrian silk, an alabastron of Persian perfumes, or a Persian illuminated MS. or carpet, a Cashmere shawl, an Indian jewel or kincob, any of the great store of these splendid and precious stuffs, and arms, and vessels of wrought gold and silver, presented to the Prince of Wales, on which we do not find the acknowledgment of the divine author and finisher of every perfect work; in symbols taken from the most majestic of trees and the loveliest and most graceful of flowers, and which express more simply, directly, and fully, than can any form of words, the wisdom and beneficence of the Creator, and the gladness and praise of men. The Portuguese, the first discoverers of India, always carried the Cross at the mast-head of their ships as a sign of the higher aims of their enterprise, and of all human intercourse and effort. They erred grievously in seeking to give too dogmatic an effect to their aspirations, and the Inquisition of Goa is the blackest spot in the history of the connexion of Europe with the East. But not the less valuable is the recognition of the true position and destiny of men in the world,-that only in responsibilities incurred, and duties discharged by each for another, is there any hope either for individuals or for States, and that to weary of and shrink from them are the first signs of the sinking fortunes of an Empire.

GEORGE BIRDWOOD.