One of the chief merits and most striking features of Assyrian sculpture is, then, its power of selection, its rejection of all that is superfluous, its comprehension, in fact, of the true spirit and special conditions of the art. The field has none of those encumbering accessories which, under the pretext of furnishing and defining, only serve, so to speak, to take away air and elbow-room from the figures. When certain complementary features are required to make the subject clear, the sculptor introduces them, but he never gives more than is strictly necessary. He never gives way to the temptation to exaggerate such details, or treats them as if they had an interest and importance of their own. Such sobriety found its reward. His work no doubt remained faulty in many respects and inferior to that of his Egyptian forerunner, still more to that of his Greek successor; but yet it had an air of frankness, of pride and dignity, to which the more complex and superficially more skilful compositions of the following epoch too seldom attained. The good qualities of this early Assyrian school are no less conspicuous in the colossal figures with which the doorways of palaces and temples were decorated. The head of the winged bull has nowhere a more lofty expression or one more full of dignity than at Nimroud (see below, Fig. 133). The chisels of these northern artists never created anything more bold, energetic, and lifelike than the figures from the small temple built by Assurnazirpal (Vol. I. Fig. 188); we need only mention the colossal lion in the British Museum (Plate VIII.) and the grimacing demon whom a beneficent god seems to be expelling from the sanctuary in spite of his threats and grinning teeth.[235] And yet this art which is so masterly in some respects is very primitive and naïve in others. We cannot help being amazed, for instance, at the wide band of wedges that the scribe has been allowed to cut across all the lines and contours left by the sculptor. This proceeding is to be explained, of course, by the essentially historical and anecdotic character of Assyrian art, but nevertheless it betrays the contempt for æsthetic effect which is one of the characteristics of archaic art in Assyria. This feature is by no means without importance, and Sir Henry Layard seems to us to have been ill advised in deliberately suppressing it. In his otherwise faithful reproductions of the best preserved among the bas-reliefs of Assurnazirpal he has everywhere left out the continuous band of inscription which runs across them at about two-thirds of their height. By such a proceeding he has sensibly modified their decorative value.[236]