Indeed, we should be content very much to narrow the question—to care little whether the ancient statues and relievi were painted or not. We are quite sure, from the very nature of things, the materials and the objects in the use of them, that they never ought to have been painted; and if there ever was such a practice, and it were a common one as pretended, the world has shown its good sense in obliterating the marks of the degradation of art so widely, as that any satisfactory discovery of such a practice is not to be met with. Ages have passed in a contrary belief, and much more than the meagre evidence adduced must be required, in any degree to damage the long-established opinion that statues should not be painted, and that white marble has undeniable, and, for the purpose of the statuary, perfect beauty. The audacious attempt in the Crystal Palace, and the assumptions of the “Apology,” might lead to the worst taste, to retard and not to advance art. And while we see simultaneously set up a foolish and dangerous principle to govern our national collections in painting, and probably sculpture, assumed with too much apparent authority, we fear the introduction of monstrosity in preference to beauty, and the consequence in oblivion of what is good in art, and the encouragement of a practice of all that is bad. If the reader, unsatisfied with the damage inflicted in these pages upon the facts assumed by Mr Owen Jones in his “Apology,” and his conclusions upon them, would desire to see further arguments adduced from the necessities which originated the various styles of basso, alto, and mezzo relievo,—showing that they all presupposed one even colourless, or at least unvariegated plane, as the surface upon which they were to be executed, and how and why these three—the basso, alto, and mezzo—have each their own proper principles, in which they differ from each other—how they were invented for the very purpose of doing that which, if painting the marble had been contemplated, would have been unnecessary—how, in fact, they are in their own nature independent of colour, regulated by principles of light and shade, with which colour would detrimentally interfere—we would recommend to his attentive reading the short yet complete treatise on the subject, by Sir Charles Eastlake, being No. 7, in his admirable volume, _The Literature of the Fine Arts_. He proves by the characters of the three styles, and by the wants they were invented to supply, and the diversity of design which they require, that “the Greeks, as a general principle, considered the ground of figures in relief to be the real wall, or whatever the solid plane might be, and not to represent air as if it was a picture.” As Mr Jones’s experiments are made on relievi, a little study of their nature and distinctions is at this moment very desirable.