from the exquisitely harmonized colours of the agates, jaspers, lapis-lazuli and other coloured stones of which it was composed. From this pediment rose a number of exquisite pillars of ruby-coloured glass, fretted over with beautiful figures in opaque white glass, representing many of the occupations and amusements of the Colymbians. The capitals of the pillars, which were of no order of architecture known to us, were all various, and represented various groups of beautiful seaweeds, treated in a conventional manner. These pillars supported a deep architrave, which again gave an opportunity for the display of the builder's perfect skill in harmonizing the colours of brilliantly-hued stones. The general form of the roof of the shrine was a dome. It was formed of many pieces of variously coloured glass cut into innumerable facets. It looked splendid from the outside, but when one entered the temple, the sun being high in the sky, the brilliant flood of gorgeously coloured light that streamed down the roof had a most wonderful effect; it was the poetical realisation of colour without form.
The Colymbians appeared to me to understand the harmonies of things better than we terrestrials do. Their highest form of speech, as I have already said, is the perfection of harmonized sounds; their arrangement of colours is equally perfect. Their grouping of figures, whether the living human figure, or their statuary, or their architectural devices, shows a marvellous acquaintance with some laws of harmony that are almost unknown to us, or only very partially known to some. To the Colymbians these laws seem to be as familiar as the first principles of mechanics are to our engineers, and they are as incapable of pro-
