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MY DEAE SIR, Cirencester, November 15, 1876. 



I know your interesting coloured plates well.* Of course I have 

 seen and handled many a piece of Eoman wall decoration since I have been 

 here. I am convinced that the method of fixing colours to wall plaster was 

 really a true kind of fresco. Over the very thick, rough plaster, or rather 

 concrete, of the wall was laid a coat of cream of lime that is, caustic lime 

 slaked in water and rubbed smooth. When this had set, the pigments 

 (often mixed with a little lime themselves) were laid on, with brushes of 

 hogs' bristles in some cases, for I have found these bristles lying parallel 

 with the direction of the coloured band of black, buff, or white, or the 

 maroon ground of the plastered wall. Generally, I believe that no size was 

 used, and the idea of employing soluble glass that is an alkaline silicate is 

 wholly modern. I have analyzed two colours only at present, but the 

 results are not compatible with the soluble glass theory, for then I should 

 have found more than traces of silica, with coloured surfaces.! 



Yours truly, 



A. H. CHURCH. 



The colours here mentioned were found in lumps with the pave- 

 ment, and some still adherent to the wall ; and from their manner 

 of disposal it could be seen that the Eomans did not keep to one 

 colour even in a single wall, but the colours consisted of bands of 

 greater or less width and stripes, apparently of the following kinds : 

 Vermilion, red (oxide of iron), maroon, rose-colour, blue (cobalt), 

 lavender, black, and white ; and different tints of these were made 

 by laying a thin wash of one colour over another. Occasionally one 

 meets with traces of leaves, as though some more artistic decoration 

 than simple colouring was attempted ; and here also was met with 

 a portion of wall of a rose tint, spurtled over with spots of maroon. 

 Even in this plainer villa there is evidence of great diversity in 

 ornamenting so simple a matter as a flat wall. 



FICTILIA. 



Intermixed with the matters just described, we have portions of 

 flat clay or pottery tiles, and also some semicircular red pottery 

 tiles, which were probably used as drains, either the half as a 

 gutter, or two halves joined together to form a sort of pipe drain, of 

 which there seem to have been traces, partly of tiles and partly of 

 semicircles of oolitic stone, leading from the house to the river. 



* See "Remains of Roman Art," by J. Buckman and C. Newmarch. 

 t This last paragraph was written in reply to a suggestion of ours that, from the 

 freshness of the colouring, it might be that it had been preserved by silica. ED. 



