The walls of the hall are in the better instances either coated with panels of tinted marble, or parcelled out in bright bands or oblongs of paint, or decorated with pictures of mythological, architectural, and other subjects worked in bright colours upon darkened stucco. To our own taste these colours--red, yellow, bluish-green, and others--as seen at Pompeii, are often excessively crude and badly harmonised. But while it is true that the ancients appear to have been actually somewhat deficient in colour-sense, it must be borne in mind that many of the Pompeian houses were decorated by journeymen rather than by artists, and, above all, full allowance must be made for the comparatively subdued light in which most of the paintings would be seen. The hall might also contain statuary placed against the walls or against the supporting pillars, where these existed. At the farther end from the entrance you will perceive to right and left two large recesses or bays, generally with pilasters on either side. These "wings" were utilised for a variety of purposes. One of them might occasionally serve for a smaller dining-room, or it might hold presses and cupboards. In noble houses one of them would contain certain family possessions of which the occupants were especially proud. These were the effigies of distinguished ancestors, which served as a family-tree represented in a highly objective form. At our chosen date there would be a series of portrait busts or else of portrait medallions, in relief or painted, while in special receptacles, labelled underneath with name and rank, were kept life-like wax masks of the line of distinguished persons, which could be brought out and carried in procession at the funeral of a member of the family. Though there was no "College of Heralds" in antiquity, it was commonly quite possible for a wealthy parvenu to get a pedigree invented for him. It is true that by use and wont the "right of effigies" was confined to those families which had held the higher offices of state, but there was no specific law on the subject, and the Roman _nouveau riche_ could act exactly like his modern representative in securing his "portraits of ancestors." [Illustration: FIG. 32.--HOUSE OF CORNELIUS RUFUS. (Pompeii.)]