The earliest form of painting was with colours ground in water. Egyptian artists three thousand years B.C. used this method, and various mediums, such as wax and mastic, were added as a fixative. It was what is now known as tempera painting. The Greeks acquired their knowledge of the art from the Egyptians, and later the Romans dispersed it throughout Europe. They probably introduced tempera painting into this country for decoration of the walls of their houses. The English monks visited the Continent and learnt the art of miniature painting for illuminating their manuscripts by the same process. Owing to opaque white being mixed with the colours the term of painting in body-colour came in use. Painting in this manner was employed by artists throughout Europe in making sketches for their oil paintings.

Two such drawings by Albrecht Dürer, produced with great freedom in the early part of the sixteenth century, are in the British Museum. The Dutch masters also employed the same means. Holbein introduced the painting of miniature portraits into this country, for although the monks inserted figures in their illuminations, little attempt was made in producing likenesses. As early as the middle of the seventeenth century the term “water colours” came into use.

s there are no works of Ancient Alphabets of any excellence published in a cheap form, I have been induced, after many years' study and research in my profession as a Draughtsman and Engraver, to offer this collection to the favourable notice of the public, trusting that its very moderate price and general usefulness will be a sufficient apology for the undertaking.

The demand for a Fourth Edition within so short a period of the publication of the Third, has convinced me in the most agreeable manner that it has been a work required by the public. To render it still more worthy of their attention, I have here introduced some additions, likely to enhance the interest and increase the value of the pages, as

an indication of the esteem in which I have held the encouragement, and the respect I have paid to the suggestions of the purchasers of this book, and the critics by whom it has been so liberally reviewed.

12th Century. From the Mazarin Bible.[8]

Monograms, Crosses, &c.[53]

By: JOHN BURNET, F.R.S.

The early pictures, in all ages, either merely indicate the character of bas-reliefs or single statues,—a cold continuity of outline, and an absence of foreshortening. The first move in advance, and that which constitutes their pictorial character, in contradistinction to sculpture, is an assemblage of figures, repeating the various forms contained in the principal ones, and thus rendering them less harsh by extension and doubling of the various shapes, as we often perceive in a first sketch of a work, where the eye of the spectator chooses, out of the multiplicity of outlines, those forms most agreeable to his taste. The next step to improvement, and giving the work a more natural appearance, is the influence of shadow, so as to make the outlines of the prominent more distinct, and those in the background less harsh and cutting, and consequently more retiring. The application of shadow, however, not only renders works of art more natural, by giving the appearance of advancing and retiring to objects represented upon a flat surface—thus keeping them in their several situations, according to the laws of aërial perspective—but enables the artist to draw attention to the principal points of the story, and likewise to preserve the whole in agreeable form, by losing and pronouncing individual parts. Coreggio was the first who carried out  this principle to any great extent; but it was reserved for Rembrandt, by his boldness and genius, to put a limit to its further application. Breadth, the constituent character of this mode of treatment, cannot be extended; indeed, it is said that Rembrandt himself extended it too far; for, absorbing seven-eighths in obscurity and softness, though it renders the remaining portion more brilliant, yet costs too much. This principle, however, contains the greatest poetry of the art, in contradistinction to the severe outline and harsh colouring of the great historical style.