To the belief that the Greeks employed it also on their marble temples, there is only one stumbling-block—the artificial value which white marble has in our eyes. The Athenians built with marble because they found it almost beneath their feet, and also from the same cause which led the Egyptians to employ granite, which was afterwards painted—viz., because it was the most enduring, and capable of receiving a higher finish of workmanship. With these high thoughts of perfection and durability, they not only built their temples of Pentelic marble, but paved their carriage-way to them with the same material. The ruin of the Parthenon, as seen at this day on the Acropolis, with the rich tones which the sun of centuries has developed upon it, is a very different thing from a bran-new white marble Parthenon, with many of its enrichments _proved_ to have been picked out in the strongest colours. Such a building would have been horrible to behold under any sun, much more under that of Athens. Could we set aside the whole of the evidence to the contrary; could we forget the paintings recorded on its cella walls—its interior filled with upwards of six hundred statues, many of them of colossal dimensions, enriched with painting, ivory, gold, and precious stones, which would demand a far different treatment of the building which contained them; could we forget that when a marble statue left the hand of the first of sculptors, it passed into the hands of an equally celebrated encaustic painter to receive its ultimate finish;[1] could we forget the varieties of material which they combined, certainly harmoniously, in the statues of their gods—the varieties of colour which they gave to a material, by us considered to be so uniform as bronze, in which to heighten the expression they wished to obtain; (by alloys of iron, silver, and gold, used on the various portions of a figure, the greatest known sculptors produced the paleness of death,—the blush of shame,—the smile on the mouth,—the fire of the eye, and the healthy redness of the cheek;)[2] the ornaments of metal with which many of the marble statues were covered—earrings, bracelets, armlets, sandals, bands round the hair, crowns, diadems of pearls, precious stones, eyes of silver, glass, and precious stones; the metal crown of the Laocoon, the metal casque of the statue of Mars, the metal drapery of the Antinous, the earrings of the Venus de’ Medici, or her golden hair;—could we set aside the evidence either of that which is recorded, or of that which may still be seen, we should yet have felt that it must have been so, from the knowledge we have of the practice of those civilisations which preceded and followed that of the Greeks. How can one believe that at one particular period in the practice of the Arts, the artistic eye was so entirely changed that it became suddenly enamoured of white marble? Such an idea belongs only to an age like that through which we have just