163. Now, the simplest thing we can do next is to round off the flat surface _within_ the incision, and put what form we can get into the feebler projection of it thus obtained. The Egyptians do this, often with exquisite skill, and then, as I showed you in a former Lecture, color the whole--using the incision as an outline. Such a method of treatment is capable of good service in representing, at little cost of pains, subjects in distant effect; and common, or merely picturesque, subjects even near. To show you what it is capable of, and what colored sculpture would be in its rudest type, I have prepared the colored relief of the John Dory[32] as a natural history drawing for distant effect. You know, also, that I meant him to be ugly--as ugly as any creature can well be. In time, I hope to show you prettier things--peacocks and kingfishers, butterflies and flowers,--on grounds of gold, and the like, as they were in Byzantine work. I shall expect you, in right use of your aesthetic faculties, to like those better than what I show you to-day. But it is now a question of method only; and if you will look, after the Lecture, first at the mere white relief, and then see how much may be gained by a few dashes of color, such as a practiced workman could lay in a quarter of an hour,--the whole forming, if well done, almost a deceptive image,--you will, at least, have the range of power in Egyptian sculpture clearly expressed to you. 164. But for fine sculpture, we must advance by far other methods. If we carve the subject with real delicacy, the cast shadow of the incision will interfere with its outline, so that, for representation of beautiful things you must clear away the ground about it, at all events for a little distance. As the law of work is to use the least pains possible, you clear it only just as far back as you need, and then, for the sake of order and finish, you give the space a geometrical outline. By taking, in this case, the simplest I can,--a circle,--I can clear the head with little labor in the removal of surface round it; (see the lower figure in Plate XI.)