This uttermost splendour is quiet and soft in its result. The surface of course has not that mechanically even, repellently smooth, painfully fitted appearance of modern work. The planes are waved under the hand sawing, and the face is smooth but hardly polished. The colour in consequence, gray and russet rising to full yellow, green and reds, veined, waved, and flowered in all manner of gradations and lovely combinations, _vibrates_ with a wonderful “bloom” which doubtless owes much to age; but it is very probable that the marble was polished with wax encaustic which was so generally used for finishing surfaces by ancient workers. The wax deepens and mellows the colour and leaves a dull pleasant polish. We suppose the method followed was that recommended by Vitruvius for the encaustic polishing of coloured stucco walls. “Lay on with a brush a coat of melted Punic wax tempered with oil; then with a brazier of hot charcoal heat all the waxed surface, forcing the wax to melt in an even way over the whole surface; finally rub the wall with a wax candle and then polish it with a clean linen cloth just in the way the nude marble statues are treated. This practice is called γάνωσις by the Greeks.” Felix Fabri, who travelled in Palestine at the end of the fifteenth century, describes the rows of costly columns at Bethlehem, “and they are polished with oil so that a man can see his face in them as in a mirror.” In regard to the wall plating we wish especially to point out the extremely easy way in which it is applied, without thought of disguise. The slabs of great size are placed vertically, entirely the reverse of solid construction; moreover the slabs of the finer panels are opened out side by side so that the veinings appear in symmetrical patterns. At the angles the lap shows in the most open way; while it is mitred where restored. The best account of the actual methods of fixing the marble slabs to walls by metal clamps which notch into the edges of the sheet before the adjoining one is fixed, is given by Professor Middleton, who figures an example of the second century from Rome which might belong to S. Sophia. § 4. MARBLE MASONRY. After more than a thousand years of working marble through one complete development, Greek builders, by considering afresh the prime necessities of material, and a rational system of craftsmanship, opened the great quarry of ideas in constructive art which is exhaustless. In a hundred years architecture became truly _organic_, features that had become mere “vestiges” dropped away, and a new style was complete; one, not perhaps so completely winning as some forms of Gothic, but the supremely logical building art that has been.