The growth of animal worship seems to speak of degradation in the national religion, and there are not wanting at the same time evidences both of a decay in the national morality and of a decline in art. When art is required to work by the acre its productions are not likely to be distinguished by high excellence or exquisite finish. In the drawings of the time of Rameses the heads indeed are still good and the portraits characteristic, but the figures are ill-drawn in the extreme, and often most hastily finished off. Egyptian art suffered severely under the influence of certain fixed rules concerning the drawing and the proportion of figures. Under the earlier dynasties there are signs of greater freedom of treatment than prevailed at a later period, when the conventional rules, which no one ventured to infringe, had checked the progress of all true art by putting a stop to its free exercise. This following of a stereotyped pattern, combined with the absence of perspective, gives the Egyptian drawings a very odd and stiff appearance. The portraiture remained excellent, and much spirit was often shown in the drawing of animals and in humorous scenes; indeed, the manner in which, in hieroglyphic writing, the individual character of an animal or bird is given in a few minute lines is quite wonderful. The graceful outline of their pottery, the exquisite workmanship of their jewellery, show how much true artistic power was there, had it only been allowed free scope. But there never was a nation that clung so tenaciously to fixed laws and forms. Their monarchy, their religion, lasted unchanged as no other has yet done;[68] the very fashion of their dress varied but little with the centuries, and their magnificent temples were built and rebuilt on the same scheme. But already, under the nineteenth dynasty, other influences were strongly at work. The Delta was full of foreign settlers, and the names of some of its cities were Semitic. Literature was affected, and the younger writers of the day were given to introducing Semitic words and phrases—just as an English or German author does with French. Whole bodies of mercenary troops were employed in the army under a special commander; others were used in the naval service, which was never very popular in Egypt, but which was becoming of more and more importance. Others again, not judged fit for these branches, were reduced to serfage, being employed in the service of the kings and of the temples, or in still harder bondage on the public buildings, in the quarries, or the mines. Many of these, we learn, were branded with the name of the god or master to whom they were assigned, and here we see at once the arising of that distrust and fear which always beset the ease of the owners of the slave. Slavery was universal in the ancient world, but in Egypt it had always worn a milder aspect than it ever assumed in any other country, unless it were Greece, much of whose early civilisation