It is in human nature: barbarism never actually dies; it is an ill weed, hard entirely to eradicate, and is ready to spring up in the most cultivated soils. The vulgar mind will make its own Loretto: imagination and credulity want no angels but themselves to convey anywhere a “_santa casa_;” nor will there be wanting brocade and jewels, the crown and the _peplos_, for the admiration of the ignorant. Are a few examples, if found and proved, and of the best times—which is not clear—to establish the theory as good in taste, or in any way part of the intention of the great sculptors? If authorities adduced, and to be adduced, are worth anything, they must go a great deal farther. Take, for instance, a passage from Pausanias, lib. ii. c. 11: Καὶ Ὑγείας δ’ ἐσι κατα ταυτον αγαλμα οὺκ αν οὐδὲ τοῦτο ἴδοις ῤᾳδίως, οὕτω, περιεχουσιν ἀυτὸ κόμαι τε γυναικὼν άὓ κειρονται τῇ θεῶ, καὶ ἐσθῆτός Βαβυλωνίας τελαμῶνες.—“And after the same manner is a statue of Hygeia, which you may not easily see, it is so completely covered with hair of the women who have shorn themselves in honour of the goddess, and also with the fringes of the Babylonish vest.” Here, surely, is quite sufficient authority for Mr Jones to procure ample and variously coloured wigs for the Venus de Medicis, and other statues, and to order a committee of milliners to devise suitable vesture. Images of this kind were mostly made of wood, easy to be carried about; and were often, doubtless, made likest life, for the deception as of the real presence of a deity. The view of art was lost when imposture commenced. Mr Jones admits that the Greek sculptors did not intend exact imitation, but his theory goes so close to it, it would be difficult to say where it stops short. Indeed, he had better at once go the whole way, or we may better say, “the whole hog,” with bristle brushes, for when he has got rid of the “_prejudice_” in favour of white marble, his spectators will be satisfied with nothing less than wax-work. We remember hearing, in a remote village, the consolation one poor woman gave another—“Look up to them pretty angels, with their lovely black eyes, and take comfort from ’em.” These were angels’ heads in plaster, round the cornice, which the church-wardens, year after year, with the official taste and importance of the Roman Censors, had caused to be so painted when, as they announced on a tablet, they “beautified” the church. Of late years we have been removing the whitewash from our cathedrals, thicker, by repetition, than Mr Owen Jones’s prescribed coats of stucco. Should his theory prevail, we shall be again ashamed of stone; white-lime will be restored until funds shall be found for stucco, inside and out, as preparation for Mr Jones’s bright blue and unmitigated vermilion and gold. It is frightful to imagine Mr Owen Jones and his paint-pot over every inch of Westminster Abbey, inside and out.