The accompanying specimen of a doorway, which is taken from an unpublished drawing by Mr.Boutcher, is very rich and elegant, though it exhibits none but the very commonest of the Assyrian patterns.

[PLATE LXII., Fig.

1.] A carving of a more elaborate type, and one presenting even greater delicacy of workmanship, has been given in an earlier portion of this chapter as an example of a patterned pavement slab.
Slabs of this kind have been found in many of the palaces, and well deserve the attention of modern designers.
[Illustration: PLATE 62] When the architecture of the Assyrians is compared with that of other nations possessing about the same degree of civilization, the impression that it leaves is perhaps somewhat disappointing.

Vast labor and skill, exquisite finish, the most extraordinary elaboration, were bestowed on edifices so essentially fragile and perishable that no care could have preserved them for manly centuries.

Sun-dried brick, a material but little superior to the natural clay of which it was composed, constituted everywhere the actual fabric, which was then covered thinly and just screened from view by a facing, seldom more than a few inches in depth, of a more enduring and handsomer substance.