But to suppose that Praxiteles and Phidias could endure to submit their loveliest works to be stuccoed and _solidly_ painted over with vermilion, seems to us to suppose a perfect impossibility. That they could not have willingly allowed the defilement we have shown by the nature of their work, all the nicety of touch and real proportion of parts lying under the necessity of alteration, and consequently damage thereby. Whatever apparent proof might be adduced that such statues were painted—and we doubt the proof, as we will endeavour to show—we do not hesitate to say that the daubings and plasterings must have been the doing of a subsequent less cultivated people, and possibly at the demand of a vulgarised mobocracy. The clown at our pantomimes is the successor to the clown who smeared his face with wine-lees, and passed his jokes while he gave orders to have his idol painted with vermilion. Yet though it must be impossible that Phidias or Praxiteles would have allowed solid coats of paint or stucco, or both, to have ruined the works of their love and genius, under the presuming title “historical evidence” an anecdote is culled from the amusing gossip Pliny, to show what Praxiteles thought of it. “There is a passage in Pliny which is decisive, as soon as we understand the allusion.” Speaking of Nicias (lib. xxxv. cap. 11), he says that Praxiteles, when asked which of his marble works best satisfied him, replied, “Those which Nicias has had under his hands.” “So much,” adds Pliny, “did he prize the finishing of Nicias”—(_tantum circumlitioni ejus tribuebat_). This “finishing of Nicias,” by its location, professes to be a translation from Pliny, which it is not. Had the writer adopted the exact wording of the old English translation, from which he seems to have taken the former portion of the sentence, it would not have suited his purpose, but it would have been more fair: it is thus, “So much did he attribute unto his vernish and polishing”—which contradicts the solid painting. Pliny is rather ambiguous with regard to this Nicias—whether he was the celebrated one or no. But it should be noticed that the anecdote, as told in Mr Owen Jones’ “Apology,” is intended to show that the painter’s skill, as a painter, was added—substantially added—to the work of Praxiteles, whereas this Nicias may have been one who was nice in the making and careful in the use of his varnish; and we readily grant that some kind of varnishing or polishing may have been used over the statues, both for lustre and protection. Certainly at one time, though we would not say there is proof as to the time of Phidias, such varnishes, or rather waxings, were in use. But even if it were the celebrated Nicias to whom the anecdote refers, we cannot for a moment believe he would have touched substantially, as a painter, any work of Praxiteles. But as genius is ever attached to genius, he may have supplied to Praxiteles the means of giving that polish which he gave to