1240
Ibid. p. 580.
1241
[The publisher has in his possession an extremely well-made metallic pen (brass) at least fifty years old, and with it a style for writing by means of smoked paper, both in a morocco pocket-book, which formerly belonged to Horace Walpole, and was sold at the Strawberry Hill sale.]
1242
Waterston’s Cyclopædia of Commerce, 1846.
1243
Exodus, chap. xxxix. ver. 3. – Braun, De Vestitu Sacerdotum Hebræorum, p. 173.
1244
Homer, Odyss. lib. viii. 273, 278. – Ovid. Metamorph. lib. iv. 174.
1245
Lib. xxxiv. cap. 8.
1246
Lib. xxxiii. cap. 4. – Aldrovandus relates, in his Museum Metallicum, that the grave of the wife of the emperor Honorius was discovered at Rome about the year 1544, and that thirty-six pounds of gold were procured from the mouldered dress which contained the body.
1247
Cicero de Nat. Deor. iii. 34, 83. – Valer. Max. i. 1. exter. § 3.
1248
Lamprid. Vita Heliogab. cap. 23.
1249
Plin. lib. viii. cap. 48. That the cloth of Attalus was embroidered with the needle is proved by a passage of Silius Italicus, lib. xiv. 661. We find by Martial, lib. xiii. ep. 28, that the Babylonian cloth was also ornamented with embroidery; and the same author, lib. xiv. ep. 50, extols the weaving of Alexandria, as being not inferior to the Babylonian embroidery with the needle. In opposition to which might be quoted a passage of Tertullian De Habitu Mulierum, where he makes use of the word insuere to the Phrygian work, and of intexere to the Babylonian. By these expressions it would appear that he wished to define accurately the difference of the Phrygian and Babylonian cloth, and to show that the former was embroidered and the latter wove. But Tertullian often plays with words. Intexere is the same as insuere. In Pliny, book xxxv. ch. 9, a name embroidered with gold threads is called “aureis litteris in palleis intextum nomen.”
1250
Lamprid. Vita Alexand. Severi, c. 40.
1251
Odyss. lib. v. 230; x. 23, 24.
1252
Vita Aureliani, cap. 46.
1253
A doubt however arises respecting this proof. It is possible that the author here speaks of gilt silver; for, as the ancients were not acquainted with the art of separating these metals, their gold was entirely lost when they melted the silver. I remember no passage in ancient authors where mention is made of weaving or embroidering with threads of silver gilt.
1254
Salmas. ad Vopisc. p. 394; et ad Tertull. de Pallio, p. 208. Such cloth at those periods was called συρματινὸν, συρματηρὸν, drap d’argent.
1255
Antiquitat. Ital. Medii Ævi, ii. p. 374.
1256
Pyrotechnia, lib. ix.
1257
La Piazza Universale, Ven. 1610, 4to.
1258
Von Murr, in Journal zur Kunstgeschichte, v. p. 78. To this author we are indebted for much important information respecting the present subject.
1259
Bjornstahls Briefe, i. p. 269.
1260
See a description of it in Sprengel’s Handwerken und Künsten, iii. p. 64; or in the tenth volume of the plates belonging to the Encyclopédie, under the article Tireur et fileur d’or.
1261
Bericht von Gold- und Silber-dratziehen; von Lejisugo. Lubeck, 1744, 8vo, p. 199.
1262
Winkelmann, von den Herculan. Entdeckungen.
1263
Ibid. p. 38.
1264
Second Bulletin des Fouilles d’une Ville Romaine, par Grignon. Paris, 1775, 8vo, p. 111.