Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/268

 History of Art in Antiquity. indeed, that a sovereign cared to complete or keep older buildings in repair. Many of the royal houses at Persepolis look unfinished. At Susa, the superb palace erected by Darius Hystaspes was already a ruinous mass in the day of Artaxerxes G)donianus. His grandson, Artaxerxes Mnemon, re-established the edifice, re-using in the new construction part of the old materials, affixing his name thereto. Such habits as these still obtain all over the East* above all in Persia, and imply enormous waste of money and labour. Ispahan, abandoned as a capital since the advent of the Kajar dynasty, is in a deplorable state of desolation. The mag- nificent palaces of the Sofis, which appeared at the end of a long avenue of plane trees, are now turned into shops or falling to pieces. The Shah inhabits Teheran, or rather the palaces by which the town is encompassed. He never spends more than one month in the same pavilion, and builds new ones to suit his humour whenever he wearies of the old, or when some picturesque spot has captivated his fancy. This building mania causes architects and ornamentists to be in constant request, and affords them ample opportunity for self-improvement, compelling them to exercise their power of inventipn in a way that no patchwork could do. If the premise be granted that climate, race, and political system have hardly changed, or very little in Persia, the conclusion will irresistibly follow that royal architecture always preserved, and still preserves, many of the features with which it started when it made itself the handmaiden of royalty. One great peculiarity it has is that no house of any pretension, let alone a princely mansion, is without some marble basin in front, which is swept by trailing branches, and, like a glass, reflects the wealth of foliage above. Around it are gardens and sward fed to " deep greenness " by many rills. So was it doubtless in olden times. The lake at Feruz-Abad is just as full as when the fa9ade of the palace pro- longed itself in its clear depths. Nothing could be more arid than the present aspect of the platform that once carried the Perse- polit.in edifices. But the network of channels which furrowed the artificial level proves that to a large extent provision was made to irrigate the plateau. The contour and hollow of a number of basins have seemingly been traced. Without water, an abundant supply of water, trees would not have grown ; and what Persian, with his fondness, or rather passion for forest trees, would have Digitized by Gopgle