rk for the exhibition of his decorative art. Colour was
lavished in veneers of rare marbles, and costly mosaics and frescoes
covering the walls. There was thus "less unity of purely architectural
design, but a greater amount of general artistic wealth."

Intermediate between the white marbles used for external architecture
and the coloured marbles used for internal decoration, and forming the
link between them, is the variety called by the Italians cipollino, or
onion-stone. Its classical name is _Marmor Carystium_, from Carystos,
a town of Euboea, mentioned by Homer, situated on the south coast of
the island at the foot of Mount Oche. This town was chiefly celebrated
for its marble, which was in great request at Rome, and also for its
large quantities of valuable asbestos, which received the name of
Carystian stone, and was manufactured by the Romans into incombustible
cloth for the preservation of the ashes of the dead in the process of
cremation. The asbestos occurs in the same quarries with this marble,
just as this mineral is usually associated with talc schist, in which
chlorite and mica are often present. Strabo places the quarries of
cipollino at Marmorium, a place upon the coast near Carystos; but Mr.
Hawkins mentions in Walpole's _Travels_ that he found the ancient
works upon Mount Oche at a distance of three miles from the sea, the
place being indicated by some old half-worked columns, lying
apparently on the spot where they had been quarried. This marble is
very peculiar, and is at once recognised by its gray-green ground
colour and the streaks of darker green running through the calcareous
substance like the coats of an onion, hence its name. These streaks
belong to a different mineral formation. They are micaceous strata;
and thus the true cipollino is a mixture of talcose schist with white
saccharoidal marble, and may be said to form a transition link between
marble and common stone. It belongs to the Dolomitic group of rocks,
which forms so large a part of the romantic scenery of South-Eastern
Europe, and yields all over the world some of the best and most
ornamental building-stones. In this group calc-spar or dolomite
wholly replaces the quartz and films of argillaceous matter, of which,
especially in Scotland, micaceous schist is usually composed. There
are many varieties of cipollino, the most common being the typical
marble, a gray-green stone, sometimes more or less white, with veins
of a darker gre