All these Greek vases here were made between 600 and 400 B.C. or thereabouts. In the early style the figures are painted in black and purple on the pale yellow of the clay: in the next style the clay is orange and the painting is technically better, and large portions of the vases are painted black: in the next stage the process is reversed--instead of black figures on an orange or yellow background, there is now a black background with red figures, red being now the colour of the clay. These red-figured vases show Greek art at its very best, and the others mark the stages that led up to it. Personally, I do not care much for vases earlier than these. Very nice vases were found at Ialysos in the island of Rhodes, and Ruskin bought them for the British Museum; but they have none of those great qualities that make Greek art worth studying, nor even a foretaste of such qualities. In its maturity Greek art was far the greatest that the world has ever seen, but it was not so in its infancy or its senile decay. Apart from any merit they may have as works of art, Greek vases often have a human interest, especially if they are inscribed. One vase here tells you as an interesting fact, “Tleson, the son of Nearchos, made me.” Another says, “Zephyria is a beauty”; and there is the lady herself, attired in a very big helmet and a little pair of drawers, wielding a shield and spear as she performs a Pyrrhic dance. (There is a picture of this vase in the _Revue Archéologique_ for 1895, vol. XXVI, page 221.) Another depicts a man conversing with a youth, and the man has the features of Socrates and satyr’s ears as well. This vase came out of a tomb at Siana in the island of Rhodes, and is as fresh as when it left the potter’s hands at Athens: its only blemish is the imprint of his thumb, made by touching it before the clay was dry. Others are interesting for their former owners’ sake. One belonged to Fergusson, the historian of architecture, and another to Samuel Rogers, the poet, and others to great collectors of the Vulci period, such as Beugnot and Durand. Being at Burgos, 3 September 1877, I went out to the Monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña, the burial-place of the Cid. The monastery had been uninhabited for forty years: the keys were kept at a village some way off, and the man who kept them had gone out shooting. (Whilst waiting for his return, I saw a little of Spanish agriculture: the oxen treading out the corn, and the peasants winnowing it by throwing it up into the air and trusting to the wind to blow the chaff away.) When he returned, we went down to the monastery; and in the library he suggested that I might like to take away a book or two in remembrance of the place. I had scruples, but he really was considering the best interests of the books themselves. If I had taken them, they might be here in safety; and they have rotted away.