near which are situated the modern towns of Massa and Carrara. It does not appear that it was known, or its quarries worked before the time of Julius Cæsar, in the century before the birth of Christ. Remains of the former working in the quarries of Luni may still be traced; and it is thought the material found here was of a somewhat finer texture than the more modern produce. In many respects the Italian is superior to the Parian and Pentelic marbles. The grain of the Carrara marble is much closer and finer than that of Greece, and its general colour is a rich white. It must, however be admitted that the Carrara marble, now so generally used by sculptors, is not often found quite pure in very large blocks. Veins and spots of grey and blue-black, and red and yellow streaks (the latter probably oxides of iron) occur in it, and the quality or texture of the material varies also in different parts of the quarries. Occasionally large crystals are found which resist the chisel. The Romans formerly procured a white marble from some quarries they worked in Africa. Marble is no longer procured, as a rule, from Greece, though occasionally blocks of it are used. This, however, is exceptional, and the only supply for general purposes of sculpture in modern times is from the above-named source-the mountain quarries in the former duchy of Massa and Carrara, on the west coast of Italy. Different kinds of marble were frequently employed by the later Romans in the same piece of sculpture, which was then termed polylithic.

The composition which was so extensively used by the ancients for statues, called by the Greeks, chalcos (xaλkòs) the Romans œs, and the moderns bronze, from the Italian bronzo, a name derived from its colour-a rich brown-is a mixture of copper and tin, with sometimes small portions of other metals. The composition of this material, so extensively used by the artists of antiquity, appears to have been a subject of the greatest care. The mere list of titles of the different kinds of bronze known to and used by the ancients is astonishing from its extent, and the refinements it suggests in their practice. A few of the most important only need be mentioned to show the student how profoundly all subjects connected with their art were considered by the great masters of sculpture. There were even rival schools for its preparation. Pliny especially records those of Ægina and Delos; and says the highest honour was given to the Delian and the next to the Æginetan bronze.

It has been supposed from a passage in Plutarch that this famous bronze of Delos was of a pale colour; but it appears that in the time of this writer the secret of its composition was unknown. Pliny says that there was rivalry between two of the greatest sculptors of the best period of the art in the material each employed. Myron used the bronze of Delos, Polycletus that of Ægina. Besides these more especially celebrated bronzes of Delos and Ægina, there were at least three, if not more, varieties of the Corinthian. That which was called as Candidum is supposed to have had a portion of silver mixed with it, which gave it a white or light tint. There was also the famous as Corinthium, which it was pretended was accidentally produced by the melting and running together of various metals (especially gold and bronze), at the burning of Corinth by L. Mummius, about 146 B.C. A third was a composition of equal portions of different metals. The composition of what is now known as bronze, an alloy of tin with copper, gives, on analysis, very nearly the same results in all the examples which have been subjected to examination. From 10 to 12 parts of tin occur in 100 parts, the remainder being copper.

Among the varieties of wood used by the ancients for sculpture, the oak, cypress, cedar, box, sycamore, pine, fig, the vine, and ebony occur. Pausanias mentions numerous statues made of wood, έóava, but all these works have perished.

Figures of wood, usually of small dimensions, have constantly been found in Egypt, preserved in the most ancient tombs; but there are also examples of Egyptian statues on a larger scale, and even of life size, made of wood. The wood of which they are made is usually sycamore.

The ancients also used clay (terra cotta) extensively as a material for sculpture, as may be seen from the countless number of figures, reliefs, lamps, architectural ornaments, vases, domestic utensils, and other objects, which are preserved in museums and in similar collections. Usually such works are of small size, but there are statues in the Museum at Naples which prove it was also used for statues of large dimensions.

PAINTING.

THE artistic instinct is one of the earliest developed in man; the love of representation is evolved at the earliest period; we see it in the child, we see it in the savage, we find traces of it among primitive men. The child in his earliest years loves to trace the forms of objects familiar to his eyes. The savage takes a pleasure in depicting and rudely giving shape to objects which surround him, and which constantly meet his view. The artistic instinct is of all ages and of all climes; it springs up naturally in all countries, and takes its origin alike everywhere in the imitative faculty of man. Evidences of this instinct at the earliest period have been discovered among the relics of primitive men: rough sketches on slate and on stone of the mammoth, the deer and of man, have been found in the caves of France; the American savage traces rude hunting scenes, or the forms of animals on the covering of his tents, and on his buffalo robes; the savage Australian covers the side of caverns, and the faces of rocks with coarse drawings of animals. We thus find an independent evolution of the art of design, and distinct and separate cycles of its development through the stages of rise, progress, maturity, decline and decay, in many countries the most remote and unconnected with one another. The earliest mode of representing men, animals, and objects was in outline and in profile. It is evidently the most primitive style, and characteristic of the commencement of the art, as the first attempts made by children and uncivilised people are solely confined to it; the most inexperienced perceive the object intended to be represented, and no effort is required to comprehend it. Outline figures were thus in all countries the earliest style of painting, and we find this mode practised at a remote period in Egypt and in Greece. In Egypt we meet paintings in this earliest stage of the art of design in the tombs of Beni Hassan, dating from over 2000 B.C. They are illustrative of the manners and customs of that age. Tradition tells us that the origin of the art of design in Greece, was in tracing in outline and in profile the shadow of a human head on the wall, and afterwards filling it in so as to present the appearance of a kind of silhouette. The Greek painted vases of the earliest epoch exhibit examples of this style. From this humble beginning

the art of design in Greece rose in gradually successive stages, until it reached its highest degree of perfection under the hands of Zeuxis and Apelles.

Egyptian.-The Egyptians cultivated painting from the highest antiquity; the most ancient monuments of this people afford examples of it, such as the temples, tombs, mummies, and papyri. It seems to have originated among them from their fashion of colouring bas-reliefs and statues. The colours

they usually employed on the painted reliefs and on the stuccoes are black, blue, red, green, and yellow. These are always kept distinct, and never blended. Of blue, they used both a darker and a lighter shade. Red was used to represent the human flesh. Most objects in Egyptian painting had a distinct and conventional colour. The Egyptian colours have been analyzed by Professor John of Berlin. All the blues appear to be oxides of copper, with a small intermixture of iron; the result of the analysis never showed any cobalt in any of the blues. The reds may be divided into brown reds, and brick-coloured reds, and are composed of a brown-red oxide of iron mixed with lime. The greens are a mixture of a yellow vegetable pigment with a

copper-blue. The blueish-green colour sometimes observed on Egyptian antiquities is a faded copper-blue. The yellows appear to be vegetable colours; they are often very pure, and of a bright sulphur colour. The blacks might be from wine lees, burnt pitch, charcoal, or soot. The whites were generally, no doubt, preparations of lime or gypsum. Madder also appears to have been used, at least for the reddish coloured dye of the mummy cloths. These colours were used on the hardest and softest stones, on wood, linen, and papyrus. The sculptures of the most ancient temples were coloured. The tombs of the kings exhibit endless paintings on their walls. Three classes of paintings have been discovered in Egypt; those on the walls, those on the cases and cloths of mummies, and those on papyrus rolls. The coloured bas-reliefs may be classed among the paintings. The Egyptians painted detached statues also, examples of which will be found in the British Museum. No. 31 has received several coats of paint. They painted also architectural decorations and columns. Egyptian painting was imbued with one common character, and the same conventional style always prevailed. It was not an imitation of nature, but merely the harmonious combination of certain hues, which they well understood, as Sir Gardner Wilkinson remarks. The Egyptian artists had no idea of perspective; objects on the same plane, instead of being shown one behind another, were placed in succession one above another on the perpendicular wall.

Their method of drawing the human figure was mathematically by means of squares. The proportions were different in the ancient and later periods. In the 18th and 19th dynasties, the whole height of the figure in bas-reliefs and paintings was divided into nineteen parts; and the wall having been ruled in squares, according to its intended size, all the parts of it were put in according to their established positions, the knee, for instance, falling on the sixth line.

The following description of the mode in which the painted bas-reliefs were executed is from Belzoni's account of the great tomb which he opened in the Biban el Mulouk, or valley of the tombs of the kings, at Thebes. In this instance, the reliefs are cut out of the natural rock in which the excavation was made; but a similar process must have been adopted with bas-reliefs cut on any surface of stone. All the figures and hieroglyphics