FIFTH DIVISION. L ARRANGEMENT OF COLOURED OBJECTS OF LIMITED EXTENT. FIRST SECTION. ON THE EMPLOYMENT OF COLOURS IN SECOND SECTION. —APPLICATION TO INTERIOR DECORA TION. THIRD SECTION.-APPLICATIONS TO CLOTHING. FOURTH SECTION.-APPLICATIONS TO HORTICULTURE. 1ST SUB-SECTION.—APPLICATION OF THE LAW OF CONTRAST OF 2ND SUB-SECTION.-ON THE DISTRIBUTION AND PLANTING VEGETA- SECTION L EMPLOYMENT OF COLOURS IN ARCHITECTURE. CHAPTER I.-EMPLOYMENT OF COLOURS IN EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE (540.-545.). CHAPTER II.-EMPLOYMENT OF COLOURS IN GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE (546.-548.). CHAPTER III.-EMPLOYMENT OF COLOURS IN GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE (549.-555.). CHAPTER I. ON THE EMPLOYMENT OF COLOURS IN EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. (540.) THE Egyptians employed various colours, such as red, yellow, green, blue, and white, to decorate their monu ments. (541.) Lancret, author of the text of that part of the work on Egypt which relates to its monuments and antiquities, while expressing his astonishment at this practice, remarks, nevertheless, that all those who have seen the Egyptian monuments can attest that when they looked at these paintings, even for the first time, they did not strike them disagreeably; he afterwards enounced his opinion, that if at first the colours appear distributed arbitrarily, it is because we have not combined a sufficient number of observations upon this matter, and that it will one day be found that this part of the arts of the Egyptians was, like all the rest, submitted to inflexible rules. (542.) Champollion the younger expresses himself in these terms on the application of colours to Egyptian architecture: "I should wish to introduce into the great temple of Ipsamboul all those who refused to believe in the elegant richness that painted sculpture adds to architecture: in less than a quarter of an hour I engage that they will perspire all their prejudices, and that their à priori opinions will quit them by every pore." (543.) If we look attentively at Plate 18 of the great work on Egypt, being a coloured perspective view taken from the portico of the great Temple of the Isle of Phila, we see that the walls, ceilings, and columns are covered with hieroglyphics, symbolical figures, and allegorical pictures, all coloured. (544.) These hieroglyphics were intended to be read; nsequently it was necessary to make them very distinct from the remainder of the surface of the stone in which they are generally cut in relief; for, in colouring them, they become more distinct than they would be by relief alone. But if the Egyptians had been guided by the principle of distinct view only, they would have constantly coloured them for the same kind of stone in a single colour, which would have been chosen in such a manner as to have come out in the highest possible relief upon the ground; but this they have not done: they have employed different colours. Here there is no doubt they were led to this by the marked taste of Eastern nations for colours; as to any symbolical use they may have made of each in particular, it does not devolve on me to explain. (545.) Once admit the fact of colouring hieroglyphics, the colouring of other figured objects accompanying them appears to have been a necessary consequence, so as to bring out certain symbols and allegories more distinctly and more agreeably by the effect of their various colours, or because it was understood that if the hieroglyphics only were differently coloured, there would be no harmony between them and the other figured objects. In fact, if we attentively consider the paintings in Plate 18 of the work upon Egypt above mentioned (543.), no one can mistake the harmony between the hieroglyphics and the other painted objects; and this is so true, that we should not feel shocked by the sight of these coloured hieroglyphics, even were we ignorant of the nature of their written characters, and therefore mistook them for figures traced by the whim of the artist. In my opinion this harmony clearly justifies the passages from Lancret and Champollion the younger, above quoted (541. and 542.). Supposing the colouration of the ornaments accessory to the hieroglyphics had determined that of the latter, and not inversely as I had supposed it, there would be no reason to come to a different conclusion, CHAPTER II. ON THE EMPLOYMENT OF COLOURS IN GREEK ARCHITECTURE. (546.) THE discovery of Greek temples coloured on the exterior is doubtless a very remarkable fact in Archæology; for if these monuments appeared to many persons to reject the application of colours in their external decoration, they were assuredly made by the Greeks. Now it is impossible not to admit that it was among this people that the alliance of colours with architecture was made, not at the epoch of its decline, but at a period when they erected monuments in the best style: in fact, the ruins of coloured temples discovered by the excavations made in Greece, Italy, and Sicily, in places where many Greek colonies prospered, have this characteristic in an unmistakable degree. (547.) If we seek the cause which has determined the Greek architect to seize upon one of the most powerful means that the painter has of addressing the eye, we shall find it especially, I think, in a case for colours, rather than in the intention of rendering the various parts of an edifice more distinct from each other by colouring them differently, and of substituting painted ornaments for ornaments in relief, whether sculptured or moulded, or of augmenting the relic these ornaments already possessed; finally, the communica tion of the Greeks with the Egyptians may have induced them to imitate the latter in this application of colours to monuments. (548.) In the coloured drawings of Greek monuments which I have been able to procure, I have remarked not only the number of colours employed in these monuments, white, black, red, yellow, green, and blue, but also the use which has been made of them under the relation of variety and purity of tint, of distinct view of the parts, and of the harmony of the whole. In the work of the Duke de Serra di Falco upon the Antiquities of Selinus, we see coloured designs, representing the ruins of Greek temples, where the principal lines, such as the fillets of the architrave and those of the cornice, are red; the |