Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/574

558 558 SAEACENIC ARCHITECTURE. Part III. barbarous splendor, almost nnequalled in the whole world. Even now, in its premature decay, it strikes almost every traveller with astonish- ment, though the style is not one that looks well in ruin, owing to the perishable nature of the materials employed, and the tawdry effect of glazed tiles, when attention is drawn to the fact that they are a mere surface ornament to the walls. The forms and peculiarities of this style will be better judged of — in a woodcut at least — ^l^y the representation of the Madrissa, or college, of Husein Shah (Woodcut No. 991), the last of the Sufi kings of Persia; and though erected at the end of the 17th century, while the great mosque was built in the beginning of it, but little change seems to have taken place in the interval : the minarets are of the same form, the double bulb-shaped dome is similar, and the double arcades that surround the court of the mosque are the same in form as those that encircle the Maidan Shah. From the time of the Afghan invasion, which took place during the reign of the Sultan Husein in the beginning of the last century, Persia does not seem to have recovered herself sufficiently tf) under- take any great works ; some palaces, it is true, have been built, and mosques of inferior dimensions, but nothing really remarkable of late years. The influence of the corrupt styles of Europe has become too apparent to enable us to hope that she will ever again be able to recover her place in the domain of art. Although it was sometimes brilliant, and always truthful, the Persian Saracenic is hardly entitled to rank among the really great or admirable styles of architecture. Its chief historic interest rests on the fact of its being a modern reproduction of the style of the ancient palaces of Nineveh and Babylon, using the same thick walls of imper- fectly burned bricks, and covering them with the same brilliant colored decorations of glazed and painted tiles and bricks, carrying this species of decoration to an extent never attempted in any other part of the world. This, too, constitutes its principal claim to interest in an artis- tic point of view, since it shows how far polychromatic decoration may be used, both internally and externally, not only without any offence to good taste, but with the most complete success in producing that beauty and splendor which is the aim of all architectural utterance. Palaces. The Persian princes showed almost as much taste and splendor in their palaces as in their mosques ; but these were not from their nature so capable of architectural display as the others. An Eastern palace neither requires that mass of apartments and offices which are in- dispensable in Europe, nor does the climate admit of their being massed together so as to form a single group, imposing from its size.