[Illustration: FIG. 18.]

This form of ornament has been introduced into Europe since the French
expedition to Egypt, owing to the importation of genuine Cashmere shawls.
(When it cropped up in isolated forms, as in Venice in the fifteenth
century, it appears not to have exerted any influence; its introduction is
perhaps rather to be attributed to calico-printing.) Soon afterward the
European shawl-manufacture, which is still in a flourishing state, was
introduced. Falcot informs us that designs of a celebrated French artist,
Couder, for shawl-patterns, a subject that he studied in India itself, were
exported back to that country and used there (Fig. 20).

In these shawl-patterns the original simple form meets us in a highly
developed, magnificent, and splendidly colored differentiation and
elaboration. This we can have no scruples in ranking along with the
mediæval plane-patterns, which we have referred to above, among the highest
achievements of decorative art.

[Illustration: FIG. 19.]

It is evident that it, at any rate in this high stage of development,
resisted fusion with Western forms of art. It is all the more incumbent
upon us to investigate the laws of its existence, in order to make it less
alien to us, or perhaps to assimilate it to ourselves by attaining to an
understanding of those laws. A great step has been made when criticism has,
by a more painstaking study, put itself into a position to characterize as
worthless ignorantly imitated, or even original, miscreations such as are
eternally cropping up. If we look at our modern manufactures immediately
after studying patterns which enchant us with their classical repose, or
after it such others as captivate the eye by their beautiful coloring, or