follow. This is often the true expression of individual character, and not merely an accident of style. Finally, it is in art that, throughout the ages of the past, we feel the spirit, and we mingle with the hearts of men.'

6

The Fifth Essay is divided into two parts, treating of the Ministry of Colour to Sculpture and Architecture. It begins with some general speculations as to the power and effect of colour, about which, in the author's opinion, some mystery hangs which has never yet been solved. He claims for colour the same right to aim at the ideal which is generally conceded to form. He asks, 'Why is the idea of purity asso'ciated with white?' Few will be satisfied with the answer, 'Because of its exquisite union of all colours;' for few comparatively have ever seen the experiment by which this is proved, and these must confess that the so-called white obtained by the blending of three primary colours is very dingy. Most people, however, will acknowledge the difficulty which art has to meet in consequence of the differences in individual natures, or what we call variety of tastes.

6

On the question of colour applied to sculpture it appears (for it is not too clearly expressed) that Mr. Gambier Parry claims for sculpture that it is not merely imitative but suggestive, appealing to the moral and intellectual sense.'

Socrates' dictum about the province of sculpture is good as far as it goes, but insufficient, to represent the emotions of the soul by form.' Gibson took a wider view when he wrote: Form is spiritualised by tinting; it makes us forget the material: the Greeks were right.' Why, then, is marble the best material for sculpture? Because it shows the modelling and finish the best. It is better than dark materials, which show a few bright spots, and not a surface of modified lustre. This effect is helped by a warm tint, which gives the mellowing effect of age. Terra cotta and ivory have much to recommend them, and the latter admits of colour to any extent. The feeling for colour is stronger among southern nations than among northerns, so that pure white marble would have struck a Greek eye as a blot; not that they attempted realistic colouring, but they aided the effect of architecture by the employment of colour for the background of groups, for hair, armour, and drapery. From the splendid palaces of Assyria to the temples on the Nile, all was coloured. The arts travelled westward, and were brought to perfection by the genius of Pheidias. The sculptured wall pictures of Ninevehi and Egypt, the golden gates of Shalmanezer's palace, with their processions of

countless figures in relief, and incidents of history and warfare, were the first suggestion of an art perfected at last in the friezes of Athens and Phigalia.' The enquiry into the use of colours by the Greek artists at the best period of their arts is not easily satisfied, because so many of the traces of colour have disappeared. The deep recesses of 'sculptured forms, the sheltered corners of walls and hollowed mouldings, alone retain the evidences of the colour that once covered them.' However, there is enough evidence to convince unprejudiced judgement that colour was an important element of sculpturesque and architectural effect in the greatest works of classic art.' On this point it may be sufficient to quote one passage, which gives some details of evidence gathered from well-known sites :

Wherever we look among the sites of ancient celebrity, as at Egina and Athens, in the Morea or in Asia Minor, at Olympia and Halicarnassus and the islands of the Egean, at Pæstum, Girgenti, or Selinunte, and among the countless remains scattered far and wide, but of which all trace or name is lost, unquestionable evidences from travellers, whose very purpose as scholars and artists was to search out and verify the history and arts of classic antiquity, all combine to one and the same result. In many places the colouring remained bright; in others, where the gold or encaustic had perished from the sculpture, the stain remained. Where the colour had faded from the architecture, the etched outlines showed where the architect had designed upon his own mouldings the ornament for the painter; holes in the marble plainly indicated where metal decorations had been fastened on the frieze, where the gilt bronze harness had been fastened to the horses, and where helmets and weapons had been attached to the figures of gods and men.'

Altogether this part of the essay is very instructive, as showing the general use of colour, and the objects sought by its application to sculpture. The difference between the climate of Greece and our northern climate has to be taken into account before we can enter into the feelings which led the great architects and sculptors of the classic period to employ colour. To what extent it was employed is difficult to say, because five centuries had elapsed before Pausanias, Pliny, Strabo, and Lucian described the state of the masterpieces of antiquity. But considerable light has been thrown on the subject by Professor Cockerell, Dodwell, Sir Charles Newton, and Dr. Schliemann, who all testify to the existence of colour in recently discovered sculptures, and to the fugitive nature of the tints. The processes to which the statues were exposed are feelingly described by Mr. Gambier Parry :

6

They were at first well cleaned upon their discovery; then on arrival at their destinations well soaped for taking plaster casts, then chemically washed to get rid of the soap (as the Elgin marbles and others in the British Museum were treated), and at last presented to us bare marble; and people think that they were ever bare, from which the old encaustic painter's work has thus been ruthlessly stripped, and not a blush of it remains.'

The contemplation of such barbarism seems to have been too much for the author, as the concluding sentence of the essay defies analysis and, like some others in the book, needs recasting.

The subject of the second part of the Fifth Essay is Architectural Wall-Painting. The author, after stating that the revival of ideas of colouring Christian buildings was comparatively recent, shows how this was stimulated by discoveries in Greece and at Pompeii, which afforded a proof that it was possible for the arts to work harmoniously. When painting is used in decorative architecture, the painter must work under certain restrictions, which, when fairly appreciated, are no hindrance. Certain minor effects may, it is true, be lost, but the greater elements of form, pro'portion, and equilibrium' may be secured. This is very well expressed by the author, who has a good right to speak of the effect upon the artist's mind of the restrictions which architecture imposes. As instances of free work, he mentions the paintings of Michel Angelo in the Sistine Chapel, and those of Raphael in the Stanze. It is by no means necessary, he proceeds to say, that all wall paintings should be treated architecturally: for instance, the paintings of Pinturicchio in the Libreria at Siena would greatly lose in interest were they deprived of their historical backgrounds; and, to come nearer home, the frescoes of Herbert and Maclise in the Houses of Parliament would suffer from a rigid architectural treatment. The contrast between architectural wall-painting and free picture painting, and the province of each, is well expressed by Mr. Gambier Parry: 'Let picture painting be as free as the air it imitates, but 'architectural wall-painting is bound by the respect which one art owes to another. In the former, the effect of it should be the annihilation of surface, in the latter its em'phasis.'

6

After enumerating some of the great wall-paintings of the age of Pericles, and showing how the feeble Byzantines, the Christian mosaicists, and the Gothic wall-painters only followed on the lines which had reached them through

'dark and evil times from the finest art schools of antiquity,' the author points out that there were two distinct systems of painting by the Greeks-one on panels, the other on walls. Wall-painting was essentially the art of the great building age; grand, heroic, monumental.' We can only form a faint notion of what the Greek wall-paintings were from descriptions, and from designs on ancient vases; but we gather that they were characterised by sculpturesque selfrestraint. Some of the existing Lekythi (of which a fine specimen is in the British Museum, on which is painted the group of Orestes, Electra, and Iphigenia at the tomb of Agamemnon') are remarkable for the perfection of the drawing and the intensity of the colour. From this, and from the Cameirus vase, also in the British Museum, representing the surprise of Thetis by Peleus, we may form a conception of the character of the wall-paintings of the classic age, and of the essentially architectonic character of the paintings of Polygnotus and his contemporaries.

An interesting and just deduction is drawn from the superiority in many of the existing vases of the composition and treatment to the design. Where this is found to be the case, we may infer that the composition reflects the work of a better period of art, whilst the faults of design are attributable to the inferiority of the workmen in succeeding centuries. The essay concludes with an eloquent assertion of the claims of architecture to be regarded as the centre of all the arts

'towards which they are all attracted by mutual regard and interest, and round which, as in natural relationship, they group their various attributes; with all their skill and all their poetry, making architecture itself completely beautiful, at once the home and the glory of them all.'

We have quoted largely from the author's own words, because it would be difficult to improve upon them, and because his practical knowledge of painting united to architecture, and working in due subordination to it, entitles him to speak with an authority which few living men can claim. It is a pity that the classical names were not subjected to scholarly revision. The eye would not then be offended by such blots as Olympion' for 'Olympieion, 'Lechithoi' for 'Lekythi' (Gr. λkvoo), Zanthus for Xanthus,' 'Pheigalia' for Phigalia,' and Agatharcus' for 'Agatharchus.' The publications of the Hellenic Society have familiarised the students of art with a more correct orthography, and it

is not too much to expect that a writer who shows so much knowledge, so much observation, and so firm a grasp of principles should conform to the received standard.

The subject of Ancient Mosaic, of which Mr. Gambier Parry treats in the first part of his Sixth Essay, has been already handled by Mr. Hope in his work on Byzantine Architecture. He points out that mosaic pavements, called by Pliny (xxxvi. 25) genus pavimenti Græcanici,' were introduced into Italy in churches of cities connected with the Eastern Empire, Ravenna, Venice, &c. He also shows that a similar work was applied to surfaces of walls-only in the case of the floors pietre dure' were employed; on the walls incrustations of enamel and composition were used. Both Mr. Hope and Mr. Ruskin give many instances of mosaic decoration, chiefly in the hieratic style. Mr. Gambier Parry brings his antiquarian knowledge and love of research to bear upon the origin and early history of the art. Like Dr. Schliemann, whom he quotes,* he derives 'mosaic' from pebbles put before a door and arranged in a pattern. As regards the name, he thinks mosaic' is connected with μουσεῖον,† the ordinary Greek term ψήφωσις not being adequate to express the high finish of such work, nor the term for a pavement, λιθόστρωτον ἔδαφος.

Pliny (xxxvi. 61) quotes a line of Lucilius, which speaks of pavement being adorned

Arte, pavimento atque emblemate vermiculato.

The word 'musivus' is used for mosaic' by a writer towards the close of the third century A.D., and also by Augustine.‡ This is the nearest approach to mosaic' in Latin. It was used somewhat promiscuously from the grand pavement of the battle of Issus to the picture of the Madonna made of inlaid flowers by Italians at a village festa.'

After this enquiry into the origin of the name, Mr. Gambier Parry raises the question whether the most ancient nations-the Chinese and the Egyptians-practised mosaic. He answers the question in the negative. The Chinese appear to have used coloured marbles laid chequer-wise, and coloured tiles laid like a chessboard; but true mosaic, 'architectural or pictorial, appears to be conspicuous by its absence among the arts of the Celestial Empire.' Nor

* Troja, 1884, pp. 53, 54.

+ Cf. Horace, Ep. ii. 2. 92: Cælatumque novem Musis opus.' Civ. Dei, 16. 8.

VOL. CLXVI. NO. CCCXL.

F F