The third period commences with Zeuxis, marking an era distinct at once in principle and in excellence. Preceding masters had crowded their tablets with numerous figures. He introduced simplicity of composition, and relied upon the perfection frequently of a single figure to concentrate interest. He was equally simple in his coloring, never using more than four, often only two pigments. Parrhasius equalled the former in expression, and seems to have surpassed him in coloring. Euphranor was equally celebrated in painting as in statuary. Both were surpassed by Timanthes, who, in veiling the head of a father compelled to attend the sacrifice of his daughter, appealed to the heart not in vain, when the powers of genius had failed. Eupompus, by the splendour of his style, gave rise to a new distinction of schools into the Athenian and Sicyonian, in addition to the Asiatic, the Rhodian, and the Corinthian. Theon of Samos obtained high praise for the eager haste of his young warrior to join the fight. Aristides of Thebes, in his picture of the wounded mother, solicitous, in the pangs of death, lest her child should suck blood, appears to have reached the utmost range of expression in art. And lastly, Pamphilus the Macedonian, eminent for the natural feeling and truth of his style, was the master of Apelles. This era, embracing about the first half of the fourth century, coincides with the commencement of the Phidian age in painting. Whatever might have been the merits of preceding masters, Zeuxis was certainly the first from whose works we derive explicit statements of the ideal in Grecian painting. This ideal, as in their sculpture, was immediately derived from reality; it was no farther the creation of fancy, than as taste and imagination were employed in selecting and combining what was good in particular, towards an approach to the best, in general nature. 'Behold,' said Eupompus to Lysippus, when consulted by the young sculptor on the subject of imitation, pointing to the passing multitude, 'Behold my models: from nature, not from art, must he study, who aspires to the true excellence of art.' Zeuxis, then, first discovered or practised the grand principle in the heroic style of painting,--to render each figure the perfect representative of the class to which it belongs. There is reason to believe, also, that he taught the true method of grouping; at least, from the manner of description adopted by Pausanias, it would evidently seem that in all pictures anterior to this age, the figures were ranged in lines, without any principal group on which the interest of the event was concentrated. Even so late as the works of Panænus, the brother of Phidias, the different distances were represented by the very inartificial and ungracious means of placing the figures in rows one above the other. In all his improvements, Zeuxis was more than followed by his able contemporaries. It is a singular and an amusing fact, that