The ancient painted vases are now divided into six classes, embracing forty-nine various shapes.[210] The styles are also divided into Early or Egyptian, Archaic Greek, Severe or Transitional, Beautiful or Greek, Florid, and into those of the Decadence period. Should cremation be extensively adopted nowadays, it is not unlikely that all these forms and styles will be laid under contribution. A friend[211] has kindly drawn for the present work a dozen urns, adapted for the reception of human ashes (_see_ Plate IV.). Fig. 1 is Archaic in shape; fig. 3 belongs to the Perfect or Beautiful forms; and fig. 2 represents a shape often used during the Florid era. The others are original designs based upon classic lines, but not referable to any one period. Some very elegant forms of the ancient vases, copied from gems and other archæological resources, are to be found embodied in the monuments of the churchyards and cemeteries of the present day.[212] [210] H. M. Westropp. [211] The artist, Mr. J. E. Newton, an exhibitor at the Royal Academy of 1874. I have engraved a few of his designs. [212] The above remarks do not refer to those monster urns in which the whole body was entombed unburnt. Some of these measure six feet in length and four and a half feet in width. One found at Dardanus was able to accommodate six persons. See the 'Illustrated London News' of April 26, 1856. Had the practice of cremation followed uninterruptedly down to our times, the receptacles for the ashes would doubtless have been shaped according to the prevailing taste of each period of architecture. For instance, the genius of the Semicircular style, which prevailed from the sixth to the twelfth centuries, and embraced the Anglo-Saxon and Norman periods, would have left its own peculiar mark, just as it has done upon the fonts which were sculptured during its sway. The Early Pointed, the Geometrical, and the Decorated and Late or Perpendicular Gothic periods would, in a similar manner, have influenced the symmetry of the vases produced between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, and contributed their own quota of beautiful shapes. And, speaking generally, ecclesiastical taste, which presided over every detail of church construction down even to the piercing of the keys, would have been as easily recognisable in the vases which contained the ashes of the dead.