The barbarous act of the great Macedonian conqueror, in committing the palace of Persepolis to the flames, tended to prevent a full recognition of the real greatness of Persian art even after the Greeks had occupied the country; but we find from this time a certain amount of acknowledgment of its merits--a certain number of passages, which, like that which forms the heading to this chapter, admit alike its grandeur and its magnificence.
If, however, the ancients did less than justice to the efforts of the Persians in architecture, sculpture, and the kindred arts, moderns have, on the contrary, given them rather an undue prominence.

From the middle of the seventeenth century, when Europeans first began freely to penetrate the East, the Persian ruins, especially those of Persepolis, drew the marked attention of travellers; and in times when the site of Babylon had attracted but scanty notice, and that of Nineveh and the other great Assyrian cities was almost unknown, English, French, and German savans measured, described, and figured the Persian remains with a copiousness and exactness that left little to desire.

Chardin, the elder Mebuhr, Le Brun, Ouseley, Ker Porter, exerted themselves with the most praiseworthy zeal to represent fully and faithfully the marvels of the Chehl Minar; and these persevering efforts were followed within no very lengthy period by the splendid and exhaustive works of the Baron Texier and of MM.

Flandin and Coste.

Persepolis rose again from its ashes in the superb and costly volumes of these latter writers, who represented on the grandest scale, and in the most finished way, not only the actual but the ideal--not only the present but the past--placing before our eyes at once the fullest and completest views of the existing ruins, and also restorations of the ancient structures, some of them warm with color and gilding, which, though to a certain extent imaginary, probably give to a modern the best notion that it is now possible to form of an old Persian edifice.
It is impossible within the limits of the present work, and with the resources at the author's command, to attempt a complete description of the Persian remains, or to vie with writers who had at their disposal all the modern means of illustration.