Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/269

SECONDARY FORMS. 247 lower parts have been preserved. The missing- parts of the decoration may easily be supplied by a little study of the Assyrian remains. The four sides of the building at Khorsabad, called by M. Place the Observatory, are decorated uniformly in this fashion. The general effect may be gathered from our restoration of one ano-le. The architect was not content with decorating- his wall o with these grooves alone ; he divided it into alternate com- partments, the one salient, the next set back, and upon these FIG. 101. Decoration of one of the harem gates, at Khorsabad ; compiled from Place. compartments he ploughed the long lines of his decoration. These changes of surface helped greatly to produce the varied play of light and shadow upon which the architect depended for relief to the bare masses of his walls. The most ordinary workmen could be trusted to carry out a decoration that consisted merely in repeating, at certain measured intervals, as simple a form as can be imagined, and, in the language of art as in that of rhetoric, there is no figure more effective in its proper place than repetition. The necessity for something to break the monotony of the brick