Traces of the antique system of covering construction with tables of wood, plates of metal, or slabs of stone, representing tapestry-work, may still be perceived in the Grecian monuments, for those parts of them which were destined to be ornamented with historical paintings or painted sculpture, are executed in the Assyrian fashion; as, for example, the tympanums of the pediments, the metopes, the friezes, the parts between the columns, and round the walls of the “cella.” It is thus that Grecian monuments show us the fourth path which architecture made towards stone style. The constructive parts of the building, that is to say, those parts which constituted the entablature of the roof, and its supports, _the columns_, were painted with the colour of the Greek vases, viz., a very transparent and vaporous brown-red. The walls, inclusive of the “_antæ_,” which formed only projecting parts of the walls, were of a blue, which was broken by black and a little yellow, and not very dark. This colour formed also the ground for most of the sculptures, except the metopes, which I believe had red grounds. The red in the ornamented mouldings was a very bright vermilion, differing from the red of the ground by colour and treatment. The same is the case for the blue, which, in the ornamented mouldings, is deeper than on the large surfaces, and tinted in different shades. The _oves_, or eggs, for instance, were blue, with a darker blue tint around. The green is a colour which occurs frequently on the Athenian temples, so on the leaves on the moulding which runs under the frieze of the opisthodome of the temple of Theseus, and between the red and blue leaves of the capitals of the antæ. The same sea-green occurs on the draperies of some sculptured figures. The enamels of wax were frequently covered with washes of thinner colours. This has not been remarked by our restorers of antique polychromy, but is nevertheless necessary for giving softness to the general effect. The ornaments, as I have just observed, are placed in pieces and soldered together; the solderings forming fillets slightly elevated from the surface and of another colour. I cannot say whether in gold, black, or even in some parts white. I have, for my own part, adopted the hypothesis that it was gold in the Athenian temples, but not on those of Sicily where a strict Doric character prevailed. I have not found many traces of colour on the Ionic temple of Minerva Polias, and cannot say if the red, which I found on the columns of the Northern Portico, belonged to the ancient colouring, or was of more recent date. On the plate, in my work, which gives a panel of the temple of Theseus, is seen the design of a row of pearls, with a double range of disks. I can guarantee the exactitude of my observations, although this extreme richness and smallness of detail in an object destined to be seen from a distance may well astonish us.