404 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



The Secretary read the following extracts from scientific works last re- 

 ceived from abroad and home, viz : 



PAINTED STATUAKY. 



Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson has examined the question and finds that it was 

 universal among the ancients. Bas relievos or alto relievos all painted. 

 The earliest statues were all painted red. They could not bear the naked 

 bright white marble statuary. The Romans gave an annual coating of Ver- 

 million to their statues — gave colored eyes and colored dress. They also 

 used metallic compounds to color the bronze statues. The colored marble 

 busts in the Capitol Museum, show that their now white faces were once 

 painted to correspond. The old wooden colossal acroliths, (wooden bodies 

 with stone heads and feet) of the time of Phidias, were covered with real 

 drapery, and the faces colored (probably) to life. Etruscan bas relief, 

 flesh colored figures. Spain now has colored statues of kings, martyrs, 

 saints, &c. The Greeks sometimes gilded as well as painted statues, and 

 sometimes left them without. 



ARCHITECTURE. 



It has been supposed that the ancients did not understand the use and 

 properties of the arch. There are round arches made of brick at Thebes, 

 built 1490 years before our Saviour ! 



* SCHOOL OF ART. 



Ruskin, in his inaugural address before the Cambridge School of Art, 

 October 29, 1858, said : " Examine the history of nations and you will 

 find this great fact, clear and unmistakable on the front of it. That good 

 art has only been produced by nations who rejoiced in it, fed themselves 

 with it as if it were bread ; basked in it, as if it were sunshine ; shouted at 

 the sight of it ; danced with the delight of it ; quarrelled for it ; fought for 

 it ; starved for it ; did in fact precisely the opposite with it of what we want 

 to do with it — tJiey madt it to keep, and iae>to sell V We have made a 

 great fuss about the patterns of silk lately, wanting to vie with Lyons ! 

 Well, we may try forever, so long as we don't really enjoy silk patterns we 

 shall never get any, and we don't enjoy them. We make a dress to fit 

 well, but we don't enjoy the beauty of the silk ! I have the weakness to 

 enjoy (as all good students and all good painters do,) the dress patterns, 

 whether of Fra Angelico, Perugino, John Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Tin- 

 toret, Veronese, Leonardo da Vinci. The Queen is one of the loveliest of 

 Veronese's female figures. I was one day upwards of two hours vainly 

 trying to render with perfect accuracy, the curves of tivo leaves of the bro- 

 caded silk of her dress I 



PHOTOGRAPH. 



Mr. George Downes, of the Photographic Institution, (London, Novem- 

 bers 818,) has produced in the manner of M. Le Grai, four stereoscopie 

 marine views, singularly bright and instantaneous in effect. The surf 



