greatly for our good to study those influences, and to trace in them the sources of the civilization which we enjoy.

I am led into this train of reflection when I think of Persia, that ancient empire of renown extending back into the mists of the morning of the world; that land whose arms reached from sea to sea, and whose people were Aryans like ourselves, for their language, the Zend, in which Zoroaster wrote, and our sturdy English in which the muse of Shakspere found such adequate expression, are both Sanscrit tongues.

To most people in our time the Zend and the Zendavesta are of little moment, and the world is fast losing count of them. But the thought of Persia, as uttered in her arts at various periods, will continue to be felt as an inspiration in the art-thought of all men in all the ages to come. We talk of what we owe to the arts of Greece and of Rome, and of what they owed to Egypt. But how often do we ask or do we realize what they and we owe to the art-thought of Persia?

Let us remember that very nearly if not quite all that we know of the history of that nation for many ages comes to us through the medium of Greek and Roman writers; and that source of information does not begin more than five or six centuries before Christ. In regard to what they relate prior to that period, those authorities depend on legends more or less nebulous and often received at second hand.

The Persians, who call their country Irvân or Erâu, from Arcia, whence our word Aryan, are first brought prominently before us in authentic history when Cyrus or Kur invaded Asia Minor and came in contact with the Greeks while attacking their colonies on the eastern shores of the Ægean. But they were already an old people. Cyrus was merely one representative of a race abounding in heroes, a race that for ages had been working westward from Central Asia, struggling for a firm foothold, and after a long period of evolution, of alternate subjugation and triumph, at last reaching a position where the forces developed demanded an outlet in foreign conquest. This traditionary period is nobly described in the magnificent epic of Firdoüsee, called the Shah Namêh or Book of Kings.

During several centuries of this prehistoric period, Persia was alternately under the

syria. That interval of subjection is one of the most interesting and valuable of any known in the history of the fine arts. The Greek writers tell us little or nothing of its wonderful results. But if we turn to the remains of Persian art, we meet records which enable us to trace its development perhaps to its very beginning, and which also indicate one of the most important features of its influence to the present time.

The Akkadians and Chaldæans of Babylonia and the Assyrians, as we now know, had distinct art schools of their own. Before the time of Cyrus, the Persian esthetic genius had been awakened by contact with the arts of those peoples, and when the Persians asserted their independence, presumably under Feridoon, an art school of their own sprang into existence; suggested by the art of their former masters, it yet has the unmistakable stamp of a great intellectual race-an art perhaps the most remarkable yet seen in Asia for its power, but especially for its imperishable vitality. The Babylonian and Ninevite arts came to a definite close nearly twenty-six hundred years ago. But Persia is still practicing the arts, and in Western Asia and in Europe the types and ideas she created or formulated are still potent in directing the expression of thought in material forms of beauty.

The stately columns of Persepolis present, so far as we can now discern, a strictly original style, with their slender fluted shafts peculiar to Persian architecture up to the present time, and reproduced with the same general motif wherever we find Saracenic art or suggestions borrowed from it, whether at Ispahan, at Constantinople, at Cairo, at Grenada, or in the Christian styles of Portugal and Spain. The general form of the bull-headed capital, the bull-head being omitted but the spreading outline preserved, is still followed in Persia, and undoubtedly had its influence on the capital of the Greek, Byzantine, and Gothic orders.

But in the bull-headed capital we see a suggestion borrowed perhaps from the Assyrians, with whom the bull was a favorite form of decoration. I say perhaps, because it is possible that the bovine form may have been suggested instead by the legend which makes a cow play so important a part in the history of Persia. The recent explorations at Susa, the ancient Shushân, in southwest

ern Persia, where the remains of three different palaces are superimposed, one above the other, representing, as it were, three stratified periods, offer conclusive evidence of the 'influence of the Babylonian and Assyrian arts on those of Persia. But at the same time they present us with decisive evidence of the medium which has in all ages been one of the most congenial forms in which the Persian mind has preferred to express its artistic thought.

In the lowermost of the three palaces of Susa, superb examples of keramic art were found. Polychromatic designs painted on tiles and protected by rich glazes were a prominent feature of Babylonian art, as recently discovered. We can easily see how this art was suggested to a people living in a vast alluvial plain, and finding it easier to build of bricks made of clay near at hand and cemented with bitumen, than of stone brought from long distances. The germs of all original arts are suggested by the conditions of the environment. The Chaldæans had no difficulty in proceeding next to decorate their buildings with mural paintings executed on tiles.

Now what we discover at Susa is a form of keramic painting that is borrowed from that of Chaldæa, but surpasses it, an art which not only exhibits great technical skill but extraordinary ability in design. A painted lion was excavated at Susa composed with matchless beauty, spirit, and sympathetic appreciation of the king of beasts. But the procession of figures found there representing the Immortals, or royal guards, is even finer and is hardly surpassed in the entire range of decorative art. The majesty of those forms which after their long sleep of ages in the moldering earth are again brought to look on the sun which their prototypes worshiped, prepares us to accept all that we read of the grandeur of Persia under Darius the Great.

Now let us note the perpetuity of this peculiarly Persian art, made Persian by the persistency with which it has been practiced until the present day in that country. So late as the time of Shah Abbass, 1600 to 1630, pictorial plaques were made which rival the keramic designs of Susa, executed two thousand years earlier. Here we see emphatically displayed the persistence of a national instinct for a specific style of art expression. One of the most marked points in Persian

keramic art was the discovery by the Persians of the secret of irridescent glazes. This magnificent art was certainly invented in Persia before the Mohammedan conquest. It seems probable that the great city of Rheï, or Rhages, which was destroyed six hundred years ago, was one of the most important centers of the manufacture of these tiles à reflet. Many fragments have been found in its ruins, and it was a large city long before Christ. It is mentioned in the Book of Tobit and by Herodotus. After the conquest by the Arabs the making of irridescent ware still further developed until it became one of the most widely practiced arts of Persia. Not only were vases made of it, but mural tiles for the decoration of mosques and shrines. Tiles of this description have been made fully eight feet long. I know of at least one such still in existence there that is six feet in length.

A curious circumstance connected with this art was the variety of glazes, each irridescent like the elusive, mystic spark of the opal, or the shifting splendor of the dying dolphin, and yet each having a chromatic tone entirely its own. The master workmen of Natanz, Kashân, Rheï, Naïn, or other places had each their own secrets for preparing their lusters. According to tradition a certain quantum of gold seems to have entered into the compounding of them all. The secret of making this irridescent ware was lost in Persia about two centuries ago. It is said, however, that near Guadalajara in Mexico, there is a community of potters who retain some knowledge of the secret, which their ancestors learned in Spain from Persian artisans employed by the Moors. It is an interesting and important fact that in the United States at this very time a manufacturer of keramic ware, stimulated by the successes of Persian artists, has given much study to the Persian reflets, and is making experiments that already promise to prove very satisfactory in reviving this exquisite art.

And this leads us to consider how wide the influence of Persian art continues to be. The keramics of that country have not only proved an invaluable link to connect the world with the extinct arts of Babylonia, but they are at this very day still influencing the practice of keramic art in the foremost countries of the age.

The fact that Persia borrowed the idea of decorating tiles from Chaldæa and then as

reached extraordinary excellence under the Sassanides; this was the making of textile fabrics and embroideries of needle-work, one of the earliest of the arts. Thirteen hundred years before Christ, Deborah, in her song of triumph, makes the mother of Sisera say, "Have they not sped? have they not divided the prey? to Sisera a prey of divers colors, a prey of divers colors of needle-work on both sides?"

Now in such kindred arts Persia has excelled from time immemorial. Printed calicoes have been manufactured there for ages. Block printing by hand was an art original to that country. The designs are not small and constantly repeated as in our prints, but each piece is stamped with one design, as in the case of rugs. They are used for portières, table cloths, or bed quilts, and also as winding sheets for the dead, the latter stamped with arabesque designs interspersed with pious aphorisms. The Persians borrowed some of their styles of embroidery from Cashmere, but they were adepts in their own right, as one might say, in the fabric of magnificent brocades at least five centuries before Christ, as we know from the designs of embroidery painted on the tiles discovered at Susa.

As to the rugs which form such a prominent feature of Persian decorative art and the use of silk for carpets and textile fabrics, we know that the Persians were already masters in the art of carpet-making before the time of Alexander. To-day we, in the United States, can attempt nothing finer in our vast system of steam looms than to imitate in a certain far off way the designs of Persian rugs, of which the smaller and not always the best qualities come here. Do we realize what a Persian rug of the finest quality can be? The floor of one of the largest audience halls of the Chehêl Sitoon, or Grand Palace, of Ispahan is still covered by an admirable carpet in one piece that was made three centuries ago. It must be understood that these Persian rugs are made by hand, the artisan sitting on the wrong side, and carrying the design in his head. But three hundred years are nothing in Persian art. Rugs were wrought there before Xerxes invaded Greece. At the sack of the capital fourteen hundred years ago, rugs were found one hundred and eighty feet long in one piece, cunningly woven by the needle out of woolen and silk. The design of one of them represented a park with a hunting scene, the

colors being in many parts reproduced with rubies, emeralds, and other precious stones. Such rugs, although of less size, may still be seen in the palaces of the Shah.

The music of ancient Greece was borrowed from Persia, which at a very early period had a distinct system and principles regulating musical composition. The traveler in Ionia, or in the mountain valleys of Thessaly and Arcadia may still hear the instruments which animated the bridal festivities or inspired the conquering armies of Persia before the days of Cyrus.

Many other features of the arts of Persia suggest themselves to our studious attention; but enough has been said to indicate their character and the laws of their development. The most important point to consider in this connection, which has already been indicated, is the vast extent of the influence that has radiated from art centers like Susa and Persepolis, Ctesiphon and Rheï, Veramîn and Ispahan, the various capitals of that old yet ever young people of Persia, perhaps the most remarkable next to the Greeks of any of the Indo-European races.

The Moguls took Persian art eastward to India; Greek traders carried suggestions of its architecture to Asia Minor and Greece; Armenians taught its characteristics to the men who founded the Byzantine school whose culminating points are St. Mark's at Venice, Moureale at Palermo, and St. Sophia at Constantinople; crusaders carried it to the south of Europe; the Saracens took it to Egypt and Spain; the breezes of the Atlantic wafted it with the ships of Columbus to the New World; and we are sharers of the great and lasting benefits diffused by the art genius of Persia; we also reap the results of the thought which her artists inscribed on her marbles, her metal work, her embroideries, and her keramics.

While Persian art can be traced in so many different directions, we also find it naturally modified by varying conditions; its influence, however, is never lost.

The spirit, the genius of Persian art yet pervades the intellectual atmosphere of the world. That art has served to keep us in active communication with the dead arts of earlier ages, of other lands, and it has been a germinating force to the art of other races besides those of Persia. So long as her art influence is felt she speaks to us a living language, and continues a civilizing power.