One of the most interesting features of the interleaved documents in the heirloom _Parentalia_ is the sketch of Wren’s conjectural restoration of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus.[D] The last note of the printed _Parentalia_ is headed, “Of the Sepulchre of Mausolus, King of Caria.” It ends with the words, “The plate of the above is omitted, on account of the drawing being imperfect.” This imperfect drawing is pasted on the last page of the _Discourse_ in the heirloom copy, and shows Wren to be less careful as an archæologist than might have been anticipated. “The Sepulchre,” he writes, “is so well described by Pliny that I have attempted to design it accordingly, and also very open, conformable to the Description in Martial, _Aere vacuo Pendentia Mausolea_, and yet it wanted not the solidity of the Dorick order;” and he goes on to say, on very insufficient grounds, “I conclude this work must be the exactest Form of the Dorick.” The odd thing is that Wren had not noticed the statement of Vitruvius that Pythios, the architect of the Mausoleum and the sculptor of the chariot group, gave up the Doric order because of the incongruous arrangements which arose in its use. Wren’s great blunder, however, was in the misreading of one word in Pliny’s description, “Pteron.” He says it is an unusual term. Russell Sturgis gives its meaning as “that which forms a side or flank, as the row of columns along the side of a temple, or the side wall itself.” It is the more odd that Wren boggled over the word Pteron, seeing that he used the word Dipteron in his description of the Temple of Diana at Ephesus. At Ephesus there was no question in his mind of an “Attick order rising above the cornice,” but he takes the Pteron at Halicarnassus to have that meaning, and to be “a word of Greek Authors of Architecture now lost.” Anyhow, it pleasantly exemplifies on how insubstantial a foundation can rest a piece of architectural criticism which is based on literary evidence alone. His mistake naturally vitiates the whole restoration, apart from the fact that the Mausoleum was of the Ionic order. The consideration of Wren’s restoration will send the student to Professor Lethaby’s illuminating monographs on “Greek Buildings represented by fragments in the British Museum.” They must make him realise again, and more sensitively, the importance of going to the stones, and setting aside even Pliny (or, perhaps, especially Pliny) if he does not confirm their evidence.