the case of red, to have employed subdued tints of them, and red they appear to have introduced very sparingly.  Olive-green they affected for grounds, and they occasionally used other half-tints.  A pale orange and a delicate lilac or pale purple were found at Khorsabad, while brown (as already observed) is far more common on the bricks than black.  Thus the general tone of their coloring is quiet, not to say sombre.  There is no striving after brilliant effects.  The Assyrian artist seeks to please by the elegance of his forms and the harmony of his hues, not to startle by a display of bright and strongly-contrasted colors.  The tints used in a single composition vary from three to five, which latter number they seem never to exceed.  The following are the combinations of five hues which occur:  brown, green, blue, dark yellow, and pale yellow; orange, lilac, white, yellow, and olive-green.  Combinations of four hues are much more common:  e.q., red, white, yellow, and black; deep yellow, brown lilac, white, and pale yellow; lilac, yellow, white, and green; yellow, blue, white, and brown, and yellow, blue, white, and olive-green.  Sometimes the tints are as few as three, the ground in these cases being generally of a hue used also in the figures.  Thus we have yellow, blue, and white on a blue ground and again the same colors on a yellow ground.  We have also the simple combinations of white and yellow on a blue ground, and of white and yellow on an olive-green ground.

In every ease there is at harmony in the coloring.  We find no harsh contrasts.  Either the tones are all subdued, or if any are intense and positive, then all (or almost all) are so.  Intense red occurs in two fragments of patterned bricks found by Mr. Layard.  It is balanced by intense blue, and accompanied in each case by a full brown and a clear white, while in one case it is further accompanied by a pale green, which has a very good effect.  A similar red appears on a design figured by M. Botta.  Its accompaniments are white, black, and full yellow.  Where lilac occurs, it is balanced by its complementary color, yellow, or by yellow and orange, and further accompanied by white.  It is noticeable also that bright hues are not placed one against the other, but are separated by narrow bands of white, or brown and white.  This use of white gives a great delicacy and refinement to the coloring, which is saved by it, even where the hues are the strongest, from being coarse or vulgar.

The drawing of the designs resembles that of the sculptures except that the figures are generally slimmer and less muscular.  The chief peculiarity is the strength of the outline, which is almost always colored differently from the object drawn, either white, black, yellow, or brown.  Generally it is of a uniform thickness (as in No.  I., [PLATE LXXIX., Fig. 2]), sometimes, though rarely, it has that variety which characterizes good drawing (as in No.  II., [PLATE LXXIX Fig. 2]).  Occasionally there is a curious combination of the two styles, as in the specimen [PLATE LXXX., Fig. 1]—­the most interesting yet discovered—­where the dresses of the two main figures are coarsely outlined in yellow, while the remainder of the design is very lightly sketched in a brownish black.