Rough and frowning without, these old chateaux of the Argive
kings were delicate within with a decoration almost as dainty and
fine as the network of weed and flower that now covers their ruins,
and of the delicacy of which, as I said, that golden flower on its
silver stalk or the golden honeycomb of Daedalus, might be taken as
representative. In these metal-like structures of self-supporting
polygons, locked so firmly and impenetrably together, with the whole
mystery of the reasonableness [208] of the arch implicitly within
them, there is evidence of a complete artistic command over weight in
stone, and an understanding of the "law of weight." But over weight
only; the ornament still seems to be not strictly architectural, but,
according to the notices of Homer, tectonic, borrowed from the
sister arts, above all from the art of the metal-workers, to whom
those spaces of the building are left which a later age fills with
painting, or relief in stone. The skill of the Asiatic comes to
adorn this rough native building; and it is a late, elaborate,
somewhat voluptuous skill, we may understand, illustrated by the
luxury of that Asiatic chamber of Paris, less like that of a warrior
than of one going to the dance.
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