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Now in this particular instance, and in many other examples of fine Greek art, the two conditions of thought, symbolic and realistic, are mingled; and the art is helpful, as I will hereafter show you, in one function, and in the other so deadly, that I think no degradation of conception of Deity has ever been quite so base as that implied by the designs of Greek vases in the period of decline, say about 250 B. C.
Karamsin thus describes the sweep of this Tartar wave of woe: "The Mogols pillaged and burned the houses, the monasteries, the churches, from which they took the images, the precious vases and the books richly bound. Large troops of the inhabitants were dragged into slavery, or fell beneath the sabers of the ferocious soldiers of the khan.
After his death, however, my brother Saladin, who was blessed with a generous temper, gave me my choice of the two vases; and endeavoured to raise my spirits, by repeating frequently that he had no faith either in good fortune or ill fortune. "I could not be of his opinion, though I felt and acknowledged his kindness in trying to persuade me out of my settled melancholy.
Vases and meaner crockery overflowed everywhere with the gorgeousness of blossoms daily plucked from sandy slopes or the verge of the adjacent marsh. Bright carpeting kindly hid the splintered floor, and pictures did like service for the rough walls, while the whitest of muslin festooned the tiny windows.
The high white mantelpiece, adorned with vases and festoons of flowers, was of Adam's design, and so also was the dado and the cornice. The walls were painted a pale warm pink. A high brass fender, pierced, surrounded the fireplace, and there were a poker, tongs, and shovel to match, and a small brass scuttle still full of coals.
These last may have come by the land-route from the north; but the other objects prove the import of perfumes and articles of ornament of all sorts from the East. The later custom of placing in the tomb beside the dead Attic, Corcyrean, and Campanian vases proves, what these testimonies from language likewise show, the early market for Greek pottery in Italy.
The same thought guided the arrangement of the flowers with which she filled the twisted vases which decorated her chamber. The sofa was placed beside the fire. On either side of the bed, which filled the space parallel to that of the chimney, she placed on gilded tables tall Dresden vases filled with foliage and flowers that were sweetly fragrant.
The proportion of incised vases is scarcely greater than in the preceding stratum, but almost all of them have the incisions filled in with the white chalky substance already alluded to, forming a geometric design of white upon black.
Everything about it was in the most exquisite taste. The furniture was of white and gold, the vases of Sevres, a few admirable prints on the walls and roses everywhere. Left to her reflections, poor Peg found herself wondering how people, with so much that was beautiful around them, could live and act as the Chichester family apparently did.
A large table, suggestive of hospitality, was covered with drapery of the snowiest linen, the product of the spinning-wheels and busy looms of the women of the Seigniory of Tilly. Vases of china, filled with freshly-gathered flowers, shed sweet perfumes, while they delighted the eye with their beauty, etherializing the elements of bread and meat by suggestions of the poetry and ideals of life.
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