The Neptune of Rubens[293], in the gallery at Dresden, painted on purpose to adorn the magnificent entry of the Infant Ferdinand of Spain into Antwerp, as governor of the Netherlands, was there, on a triumphal arch, allegorical[294]. The god of the ocean frowning his waves into peace, was a poetick image of the Princes escaping the storm, and arriving safe at Genoa. But now he is nothing more than the Neptune of Virgil. Vasari, when pretending to find allegory in the Athenian school of Raphael[295], _viz._ a companion of philosophy and astronomy with theology, seems to have required, and, by the common opinion of his time, to have been authorised to require something grand and above the vulgar, in the decorations of a grand apartment: though indeed there be nothing but what is obvious at first look, and that is, a representation of the Athenian academy[296]. But in ancient times, there was no story in a temple, that was not, at the same time, allegorical; allegory being closely interwoven with mythology: the gods of Homer, says an ancient, are the most lively images of the different powers of the universe; shadows of elevated ideas: and the gallantries of Jupiter and Juno, in the platfond of a temple of that goddess at Samos, were looked on as such; air being represented by Jupiter, and earth by Juno[297]. Here I think it incumbent upon me to clear up what I have said concerning the contradictions in the character of the Athenians, as represented by Parrhasius. This you think an easy matter; the painter having done it either in the historical way, or in several pictures: which latter is absurd. Has not there been even a statue of that people, done by Leochares, as well as a temple[298]? The composition of the picture in question, has still eluded all probable conjectures[299]; and the help of allegory having been called in, has produced nothing but Tesoro’s[300] ghastly phantoms. This fatal picture of Parrhasius, I am afraid, will of itself be a perpetual instance of the superior skill of the ancients in allegory. What has been said already of allegory, in general, contains likewise what remarks may be made upon its being applied to decorations; nevertheless as you insist upon that point particularly, I shall lightly mention it too. There are two chief laws in decoration, viz. to adorn suitably to the nature of things and places, and with truth; and not to follow an arbitrary fancy. The first, as it concerns the artists in general, and dictates to them the adjusting of things in such a manner, as to make them relative to each other, claims especially a strict propriety in decorations: ——_Non ut placidis coeant immitia_— Hor. The sacred shall not be mixed with the profane, nor the terrible with the sublime: this was the reason for rejecting the sheeps-heads[301], in the Doric Metopes, at the chapel of the palace of Luxemburg at Paris.