And these differences are still more obvious in the great compositions turned out so rapidly by Assyrian sculptors. Examine at your leisure the long series of pictures from a single palace that hang on the walls of the British Museum--the only place where such a comparison is possible--and you will be astonished at the inequality of their execution. Among those taken from a single room some are far better than others. Here and there we find figures that seem to have been touched upon and corrected by an experienced artist, while their immediate neighbours are treated in a soft and hesitating fashion. Curiously enough the figures representing enemies are, as a rule, very roughly modelled; sometimes they are hardly more than blocked out. It seems as if they wished, from the beginning, to have no mistake as to relative dignity between the soldiers of Assur and those men of inferior race whom they condescended to slay.[122] [Illustration: FIG. 47.--Sennacherib before Lachish, British Museum. From an unpublished drawing by Félix Thomas.] A hurried artist repeats himself deliberately. Repetition spares him the fatigue of reflection and invention. The Assyrians loved to represent processions. Sometimes these consist of the king’s servants carrying the ensign of royalty behind him (Vol. I. Figs. 22, 23, and 24); sometimes of priests carrying the images of the gods (Vol. I. Figs. 13 and 14); but more often of war chariots, cavalry, and infantry (Fig. 15), or bands of prisoners conducted by foot soldiers (Fig. 48). To groups and single individuals progressing in long succession the sculptor gave a certain rhythm that is not without its dignity, but yet his treatment of such themes is deficient in variety. The same fault occurs in Egyptian dealings with similar subjects; the figures seem all to reproduce a single type, as if they had been stencilled. The designer has made no real effort to avoid monotony; he has no suspicion of those skilful combinations by which the Greek sculptor would succeed in reconciling the unity of the whole with variety of detail; he makes no attempt to make those slight changes between one group and another that please and amuse the eye without hurting the general symmetry, or breaking those great leading lines by which the general character and movement of the composition is determined.[123] [Illustration: FIG. 48.--Procession of captives; from Layard.]