Italian art could only be represented by a fusion of most of the foregoing elements and types, and would require a crowd of distinguished retainers in architecture, sculpture, painting, and all the arts of design; but perhaps she might bear a typical classical scroll for a standard, as the typical designer of that form of ornament in so many varieties, from Roman times downwards, that Italy may be said to have made the scroll form essentially her own.
Germany might follow, great in bold and brave heraldry, or with a Gothic accent in richly-scrolled mantling, and a redundant display of Renascence ornament.
France, as a more volatile Pallas Athene, might, perhaps, bear the wavering lamp of executive and imitative skill, and dramatic instinct in design.
Spain would look coquettishly under a fan, wrapped in faded embroidery, bearing the Alhambra, like a pendent jewel: while for England, what artistic emblems are left? Well, we have been described as inveterate colonists, even in art. We can only make up in a fancy costume of historic patchwork, beginning with fragments of Roman mosaic pavement, by way of sandals, Saxon and Norman hose, Gothic surcoat and body armour, a classical cloak, and a Victorian Queen Anne gable by way of headgear, and perhaps a banner of eclectic wall-paper or printed cotton.
For all that, and perhaps because of it in some measure—did we take art seriously as a nation, and make it really a natural and essential part of our life, as it is its final expression; should we determine to set our house in order, and make England again "merrie," strong in her own borders, self-supporting, and self-reliant, not suffering the natural beauty of our land or our historic monuments to be ruthlessly defaced, in the supposed interests of trade; putting our trust in the capacity of the people, rather than in the multiplication of machines; uniting hand and brain in our work, thinking more of the ends of life and less of the means, when the means of an ample, simple life shall be within the reach of every citizen, then, well—then we might fairly expect to win the palm of life, as of art, without despoiling the African.
CHAPTER VII.—OF THE SYMBOLIC INFLUENCE, OR EMBLEMATIC ELEMENT IN DESIGN
THE desire to express and to communicate ideas seems to have impelled man from the earliest, and lies at the root of all art.
While much early ornament, as we have seen, is traceable to a constructive origin, another kind, or another branch of the tree of design is traceable to a symbolic origin, and springs from the endeavour to express thought—to find a succinct language in which to express some sense of the great powers of nature, and their influence upon the daily life of man—to embody even in a pictorial emblem, symbol, or allegory his primitive conceptions of the order of the universe itself.
The mystery and wonders of nature absorbed the thoughts and touched the imagination of early as of later man, and primitive symbolic forms, or signs, constantly bear upon such ideas.