Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 1.djvu/130

 A History of Art in Sardinia and Jud.ka. commandment of the Decalogue had doomed sculpture ere its birth. 1 That arts go hand in hand together is abundantly illustrated by the countries of their predilection, where they developed and flourished side by side. They may be likened unto the human body, no part of which can be discarded without the remainder suffering and languishing in sympathy. If the architect deprives himself of the resources yielded by the sculptor, his edifice, however skilfully conceived and executed, is certain to result in rigid and monotonous aspect. The Jewish artist, condemned from the first to poverty of invention and detail, produced very little. His only work for posterity is the temple of Jerusalem. Even this, however, when isolated from its accessories, is a mediocre and small edifice, which can bear no comparison with the corresponding structures at Karnac, Luxor, the storied towers of Chaldsea, the temples of Greece and Rome, or Gothic and Renaissance churches. Nor is this all ; the art to which the temple is due, was Phoenician art, undistin- guished by the power and individuality so characteristic of Egyptian, Assyrian, or Greek productions ; whilst the quaint naivete dis- cernible in those of the Middle Ages, the graciousness of the Renaissance, are equally absent. It was a poor art at best ; for the greater part of its disposition and of its forms were borrowed from the Nile and the Euphrates valleys. If so, why have we reserved a special, a considerable space in this history for a monument which at the outset seems to have been much less important or beautiful than numbers we could name, whether in the East or near home, about whose stately remains we did not, neither shall we, tarry long ? Why, at the end of so many monuments, did we deem it our duty to take up this, replete with special difficulties, certain to arouse suspicion or provoke contest ? Had it not been wiser to reserve both space and the resources at the command of the architect for other purposes, such as restorations and the like ; which, thanks to the nature and abundance of materials to hand, would have been easy of construc- tion, consequently justifiable in the eyes of the general observer ? A similar rashness, or if preferred, seeming inconsistency finds its reason to be in the singular, nay, unparalleled part which the Jewish people played in the world's annals. Whatever has re- ference to them concerns nations who, like ourselves, profess a 1 Exod. xx. 4.