and short neck, with a small handle. The aryballos (49, 50) is a vase with a short neck, globular body, and small handle. When No. (50) is without a handle it is termed cymbe. The cotyliscos or diminutive cotylos (34) was a small slender vase with a single handle.

AUGUSTUS. Cameo.

Second Division.

GLYPTOGRAPHY, OR ENGRAVED STONES.

INTRODUCTION.

THE art of engraving on precious stones and gems is styled "glyptic," and the description of those engraved stones which have come down to us from ancient times, glyptography, from yλúpew, to engrave, and ypάew, to describe.

Among those objects of ancient art which have reached us through the lapse of ages, engraved stones may be considered among the number of the most elegant and refined by their form, their lustre, and their use, the most precious from their material and their workmanship, the most sought for from the facility with which they can be mixed with other ornaments, and set in connection with the most precious jewels.

The most beautiful engraved stones were offered to the gods, and deposited in temples. For princes, they were as an ensign of supreme power and the seal of the state; for private individuals they gave authenticity to their public and private acts. Alexander, after he had conquered Darius, used the signet of that king for his letters and acts relative to Asia. Augustus

adopted at first a stone bearing a sphinx, and substituted for it afterwards a head of Alexander, and then his own head; his successors adopted this latter, but Galba changed it for his family signet, on which was represented a dog on the prow of a vessel. At a later period some of the Roman emperors adopted the head of Alexander.

The use of signets of this kind was very general in Greece; cities, corporations, and families had signets of their own. Rings were in general use in Rome; and it was by that ornament that Cicero assures us that he recognised a statue of Scipio Africanus; doubtless because that ring bore the signet of the family of the Scipios. The engraved stones which have come down to us from ancient times have not changed their destination: the same taste employs them for the same purposes; they are not the less sought after at the present day than they were formerly in all parts of the world by the Greeks and Romans. The abettors of modern luxury have inherited the passion of the Cyrenian for engraved stones, and perhaps we might still find musicians who, following the example of the Ismenias of Pliny, wear a valuable engraved emerald which by its value evinced his high artistic merit, and, like that flute player, are annoyed at not being able to purchase it at the highest price.

If we consider, Mr. King writes, the intrinsic merits of antique gems regarded in the view of art, we have in them the emanations, ever fresh and unfaded, of the feelings and the taste of those ages when the love of the Beautiful was the all-prevailing and almost sole religion, and flourished unfettered by tradition, prejudice, and conventional rules; whilst from the universal demand, during these same ages, for engraved gems, whether for signets or for personal ornaments, artists of the highest ability did not disdain the narrow field of the pretty stone as the arena for the exertion of their powers. The unparalleled vigour and perfection of many of these performances are a sufficient proof that they proceeded directly from the master hand, and were not mere slavish copies by a mechanic, after = designs created by the genius of another.

But considering here engraved stones in a more important and useful view, in the interest of the study of the arts and customs of antiquity, we may truly say that their importance in that respect is not surpassed by any other kind of monument.

Besides being witnesses to the progress and development of the arts, we find on these engraved gems, the religion, the history, the opinions, the customs, even the very amusements, of ancient nations; the portraits of their great men; the reproductions, in much smaller proportions, of some of the masterpieces of their architecture, their sculpture, or of their painting, which have come down to us; certain indications, with regard to their progress in the knowledge of nature, and a number of examples of their graceful, singular, or fantastic compositions which the taste or caprice of Greek artists multiplied in infinite numbers. It was by the study of engraved stones that Raphael and Michael Angelo received ideas which purified their taste. Donatello, Vasari tells us, took antique gems for his guide in the designing of the bas-reliefs, which still adorn the cortile of the Palazzo Ricardi, at Florence. Other celebrated painters have found in them compositions which they have not disdained to imitate, and modern glyptics still work after the beautiful models with which antiquity furnishes us, and which they have not equalled. We here adopt the words of Dr. Croly. “The importance of these relics to learned investigation, to the artist and the amateur, to the natural and elevating indulgence felt in looking on the features of the mighty dead, deserves to make them a favourite study with the accomplished mind of England. Gems illustrate the attributes and tales of mythology, the costumes of antiquity, the fine romances of the poets, the characters of the early languages, the great historic events, and the progress of the arts; the countenances of Virgil and Mæcenas, of Cicero and Alexander, live only on gems; the Venus of Praxiteles, the head of the Phidian Minerva, the Apoxuomenos of Polycleitus, that triumph of ancient statuary, are to be found only on gems; the restorations of the Venus de' Medici and the Laocoon have been made from gems; they offer an endless treasure of the brilliant thoughts and buried wisdom, the forgotten skill and the vanished beauty, of a time when the mind and form of man reached their perfection."

"Gems," we further quote Mr. King," are the sole imperishable vehicle of ancient genius; they alone preserve to us the reflex of the departed glories of much of statuary, and of all of painting in the times from which they have descended to our own. The traditionary fame of Theodorus, Lysippus and Eutychides, of Pamphilus, Parrhasius, and Apelles, is confirmed by no surviving

evidence but what is to be deduced from them. Indeed, as a recent writer has tersely and happily expressed their claims to our attention: In the gems that have been worn by any civilised people, we possess an epitome of that people's arts, their religion, and their civilisation, in a form at once the most portable, the most indestructible, and the most genuine.' Their material, completely indestructible, sets at defiance time and the action of the elements, even fire itself can do no more than discolour it. The stone whose beauty and art charmed the eyes of Mithridates, of Cæsar, and of Mæcenas, preserves the same charms unimpaired, unfading, for the delight of the man of taste in our day. The barbarian, or the new convert, who melted down the precious ring, bracelet, or vase, for the sake of the metal, threw away as worthless or as idolatrous the sard or onyx with which it was adorned. The truly priceless work of art was received by Earth, and securely sheltered within her protecting bosom, until reviving civilisation again enabled the world to appreciate its value.”

TARAS. Beryl.

ORIGIN AND HISTORY.

THE period of the invention of the art of engraving on precious stones is unknown. The art is evidently of the highest antiquity. Some seem to consider that all evidence tends to prove the Oriental origin of this art. Stones have been discovered with inscriptions in Sanskrit, the earliest language of India; some