We are therefore driven to the remains of colour on other monuments, and to analogy for the proposed restoration of the several colours. BACKGROUND. The colour of the background of some of the pediments of the Greek temples is known to have been blue, and if we admit that the bodies of the figures were painted at all, it could have been no other colours. The flesh colour being necessarily some kind of red, would have been injured by a red ground, while yellow would have advanced to the eye, and can form a background only to white, the only colour more advancing than itself. I believe, and it is generally accepted as proven, that the ground was blue; and as there are many who stop here, admitting the blue ground, but denying the colouring of the figures, a portion of the frieze has been left in this stage, to enable them to form a judgment upon it. THE HAIR. When I first attempted the experiment, I had a strong instinct that the hair should be gold; but not having the authority for it, I was induced to try it both brown and grey; neither of these colours, however, was satisfactory, but having afterwards seen the collection of terra-cottas in the Louvre, I became convinced that I was right in supposing that they should be gold. In all these specimens the hair is of an intense red, which can only have been the ground of gilding, now obliterated. In the Elgin frieze, in the British Museum, may still be seen the holes which were drilled to fix on the metallic trappings, which were also, no doubt, gilt; and were these affixed in our experiment, the effect would be much more harmonious. THE FLESH. The most difficult point to determine, is the colour of the flesh. It is evident that the Greeks would avoid every attempt at representing nature. Whatever colours they used, we may be sure that they were treated conventionally only, so as to suggest the nature of the object represented, yet not to attempt a direct imitation; we must feel, however, that they went to the utmost limit of conventionality. M. Hittorff has in his possession a fragment of a figure from Selinus, retaining a flesh colour very similar to that which we have employed. Although colour has been found on the hair, eyes, lips, and drapery of Greek fragments of marble, no traces have as yet been found on the nude portions. And those who believe that the marble of the Greeks was only stained and not painted, build up a triumphant argument on this. The explanation, however, is very simple; it is evident that the smooth portions of a coloured object would lose their colour first under the influence of time, and, in fact, all traces of colour that ever are found, are found in the folds and crevices, from which it is fairly argued that the surface of which they formed a part was of that colour.