I submit that I have given reasons _why_ the figures under discussion should not be pictures, and that you, on the other hand, have not put forward a single reason why, a single principle on which they _should_ be pictures. You have contented yourself with adducing some precedents; as the question, however, is entirely one of principles, precedent alone means nothing, one way or another; if it were not so, I should have opposed to you cases in which the, to my mind, sounder principle is observed. Raphael's ceiling in the Vatican, for instance--an example you will scarcely cavil at. There is not in the whole range of art a single aberration that cannot be endorsed with some good name. To glance once more at the principle: whether the gold behind the figures be in effect the background of flat, or whether it be, as you hold, "essentially something round"; whether or not it be this, as I certainly assert, the wall throughout the decoration, it is unanswerably a conventional _abstraction_, it represents no concrete object, and as an _abstraction_ is incompatible with any perspective representations of solid objects, which presuppose space and distance--everything that is on the _same_ plane as the figure is submitted to the same conditions, hence any accessory on the pedestal is admissible; everything _beyond_ the pedestal is part of the background, which may be abstract or concrete, as you please, but _cannot_ logically be _both_. I am the first to admit and admire the intimate connection which existed formerly between architecture and painting: to say "architecture and pictures," is to beg the whole question. In condemning the loose practice of modern times, you cannot propose upholding for admiration the mere fact that in old times picture and wall were sometimes one, but no doubt allude with just admiration to the harmony existing between them, in the best examples, and to the wise adaptation of the one to the other. You, I submit, are attacking and attempting to subvert the very principles on which this harmony rests; my sole desire is to assert and defend them, and I earnestly desire that, actuated, as I am entirely convinced you are, more by the desire to forward the truth than to triumph in argument, the views I have put before you may eventually commend themselves to you, and deter you from further encouraging a practice which may be supported by precedent, but cannot be made tenable in theory. In the autumn of 1873 Leighton visited Damascus, where he made studies for the picture exhibited in the 1874 Academy, "Old Damascus--Jews' Quarter,"[53] and a fine sketch of the interior of the Grand Mosque which he enlarged into a picture 62 × 49 inches, and exhibited in 1875. He also made a remarkable moonlight study preserved in the Leighton House Collection.