The controversy that has stirred around the art of the ancient Egyptians, has made it clearer than ever it was before that the aim of all worthy criticism should be to attain a truthful judgment, uninfluenced by the claims of passing fashion, and untrammelled by the habit of crude comparison.

An art which has a standard of its own cannot be justly measured by the values of another brought into being by different national conditions and religious influences. Some of the criticism called forth by the aesthetic activities of this ancient people has been derogatory and unfair in character, and this must be my excuse for the following preliminary and, as it might seem, digressive remarks.

When we are considering this question in all its forms, I trust that if I speak of it with reverence, I may not be understood to infer that this art admitted of no further refinement in its developments, for that is not my meaning. What I do mean is this. Although it may need certain superadditions, it can, in the real sense, be little improved. With all its failings—and to us its apparent incongruities—the real message is there for all who can take it, and perhaps the stronger because it has been kept within its own limits, and has never been purely imitative in character.