In their every-day ornaments, rings, bracelets, necklaces, head-dresses and furniture, the architectural straight lines prevail; variety is not much required, the forms as well as the patterns must be the same. Just as we reproduce horse-shoe upon horse-shoe because they bring ‘luck,’ the Egyptian jeweller reproduced the scarabæus, and the Turin Museum has not less than 180 different kinds of scarabæi. In their architecture they suffered from one great evil--from a horror of symmetry. Their grand palaces or temples have no ruling element; everything is out of proportion, and though in their detailed ornamentation they were symmetrical, and even eurythmical--the harmony of purpose is often wanting. The thought of building for eternity, however, is always present, whilst no one can deny that in our buildings the ninety years’ lease is to be traced in every corner. The Egyptians tried to represent the forms of monumental architecture, and they certainly succeeded in reaching the sublime, but they did this in neglecting the beautiful. Their symmetrophobia, which many of our architects imitate only too successfully, spoilt everything. Their weavings were excellent; their wood-constructions, as far as furniture was concerned, faultless; music was known to them; they worked gold, and ornamented it in the so-called ‘champ-levé’ manner, and were acquainted with enamel ‘cloisonné.’ They also fixed thin layers of gold thread on metal, and filled the remaining spaces with enamel of different colours, which method the ancients called ‘encaustum.’ Notwithstanding all these advantages Egyptian art never reached the ideal of beauty; it has only the charm of the _mysterious_ for us. To keep this sentiment alive is the duty of any modern artist who wishes to work in the Egyptian style. He must try to convey some mystic cosmogonical or incomprehensible religious thought in diapers, and floral ornament, or in the use of animals or the human frame in outlines, he must place his ideas and forms under a strict linear canon. He may then succeed in reproducing the artistic forms of a nation, during a period, in which humanity did not go beyond the hierarchical in religion, and the practical in art; during which mankind struggled to find forms, but was prevented from the freer exercise of its innate artistic force by the dictates of a despotic priesthood, and was tied with merciless tyranny to monotonous canons, crushing under the weight of symbolism and mysticism every higher artistic aspiration. CHAPTER VII. HEBREW ART.