JAPANESE APPLIED ART
but nothing could efface the work they had already achieved.
In his conception of an ancient Japanese Imperial city like Nara, the reader must not be guided by Western models. He must not imagine a vast agglomeration of buildings, warehouses, stores, theatres, residences, hotels, and so forth, from which the Palace is separated by its surrounding park. He must rather conceive two entirely independent towns: the one composed of lowly wooden cottages, clustered closely together and sheltering an industrious, cheerful, but profoundly humble population; the other an assemblage of structures colossal by comparison, the temples of the gods, looking out upon beautiful landscapes, and sheltered by hills that slope softly downward to crystal lakes, forest glades, and parterres of glowing blossom. In this second, or sacred, city stood the Palace, and the gulf that divided the quietly toiling plebeians in the one quarter from the nobles and courtiers in the other was bridged only by the benevolence and philanthropy of the Buddhist priests. To be prosperous in business here, to be relieved hereafter from the pain of perpetual inferiority,—these were the blessings that the commoner associated with piety, while for the upper classes it meant successful sway, victory in arms, and prosperity.
One notable result of this religious fervour was that the sculptor's chisel found perpetual employment in producing images for the seven great temples erected at Nara and for other scarcely less important edifices in the surrounding provinces. The art of sculpture thus reached its apogee in fertility of conception and beauty of execution. Hundreds of specimens survive from the epoch, and it becomes possible to speak of
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