Lapidary

“ An annual festival, celebrated at Patræ in Achaia, in honour of Artemis, surnamed Laphria.
Lapidary. An artist who cuts, grinds, and polishes gems and stones. In the lapidary’s scale of hardness of minerals there are 10 standard degrees, represented as follows:—No. 1, talc, which is very easily cut; No. 2, compact gypsum; No. 3, calc-spar; No. 4, fluor-spar; No. 5, apatite; No. 6, felspar; No. 7, quartz; No. 8, topaz; No. 9, sapphire; No. 10, diamond. Diamonds are for the most part cut at Amsterdam.
Lapis Lazuli. A beautiful blue mineral stone of various shades of colour. ”

“ The tools the lapidary commonly uses, are not fit to polish the peridot; it should be transferred to the glass cutter, who will give it the finest lustre it is capable of receiving: or the lapidary should use glass-cutters' tools, and polish with putty.
When cut in steps, and formed in nice proportion, it will appear to the greatest advantage. ”

“ REFLECTION, REFRACTION, AND DISPERSION IT is obvious that, since a stone suitable for ornamental use must appeal to the eye, its most important characters are those which depend upon light; indeed, the whole art of the lapidary consists in shaping it in such a way as to show these qualities to the best advantage. ”

“ The stones are topazes, amethysts, emeralds, rubies and jacinths; they are not polished by the lapidary, or cut into facets in the more modern fashion, but are set plain, in the ancient style of jewellers’ work. ”

“ In the Peterhof works are to be seen the largest and most remarkable achievements of the lapidarian art, vases and pedestals and columns of immense size, made from the hardest and most elegant stones, often requiring the labour of years for their completion. ”

“ Thus the relics which they contain have come down to us intact, and even now tell their wondrous tale, in a language of their own, of ages and of races of beings long since passed away. A single implement of stone or of flint; a weapon or an ornament of bronze, of iron, or of bone; a bead of jet or of glass; an urn, or even a fragment of pottery; or any one 2 of the infinity of other relics which are exhumed, no matter to what period they belong, or from what locality they may have come; one and all tell their own tale, and supply new links to our ever-extending chain of knowledge. ”

“ In others, their treasure, however slight, of old glass, enamel, tapestry, or gold and silver embroideries, old lace, or mediæval carving, has awakened the cupidity of those who know too well how to dispose of such relics of the past. ”

“ Ruined columns, crumbling burial mounds, and remains of stone and bronze will always be surrounded with more or less mystery—a striking illustration that science is able to dispel but little of the darkness which unnumbered years have thrown around the culture of the past. ”

“ The glass beads, the amulets, and breastplates of gold—the spear-heads of bronze and flint, the rude necklaces of shells, and the pins and ornaments which we have discovered, throw no light upon the name, rank, or history of the dead. ”

“ A careful baking, either by artificial heat or in the burning rays of a tropic sun, rendered the clay tablets very enduring, so that many which have been dug from ancient ruins are now in a remarkable state of preservation, bearing letters and figures as clear as any of the inscriptions on marble, stone, or metal that have come to us from the splendid days of Greece or Rome. ”

“ All we can gather from historical documents leads to the belief that the stone implements, the pottery, the fortifications, the skeletons found, and the large mound (if it be one) were the work of a people existing anterior to the historic period and more advanced than the Knoshioni, or Powhatanic stocks. One argument grows out of the fact that all the relics have been dug or plowed up. Stone axes, flint or chert arrow and spear heads have often been found on the surface or just below the surface of the land, while the pottery, gouge, amulet, &c., have been found at various depths. ”

“ He led the way through a labyrinth of cloisters, gloomy as the grave; till ordering a grated door to be thrown open, the light of our flambeaux fell upon a flight of most beautiful marble steps, polished as a mirror, leading down between walls of the rarest jaspers to a portal of no great size, but enriched with balusters of rich bronze, sculptured architraves, and tablets of inscriptions, in a style of the greatest magnificence. ”

“ The contents of each mound and grave are arranged by themselves, so that as one passes from case to case a picture of the human life of the past is presented as nearly perfect as can be constructed out of that part of the handiwork of the people which has escaped decay. Here can be seen and studied the many singular results of the potter's art, simple and complex in form and varied in style of ornament; carvings in stone, shell, and bone; implements and ornaments of stone, shell, bone, mica, clay, copper, and other substances ”

“ The builder’s stones are graven—the footway is of pictured pebbles, miniatures, amulets, and seals, reflecting lineaments and traces of the history of entombed generations. Their inscriptions reveal to us the impress of ancient, mediæval, and modern art. ”

“ Very often pottery and ornaments are discovered, and now and again a more striking relic still—the pick strikes into a Roman grave and lays bare a manly form which once marched with the legions, or the figure of a Roman maiden, whose ornaments still lie among her mortal remains. ”

“ As you pass and look in, you see a hideous, oily, black stone, cut in the shape of a human figure, or of some imaginary monstrosity, wrapped in muslins and silks, adorned with paint and jewels, and surrounded, in his windowless recess, by lighted lamps. ”

“ We found the earth full of human bones and antique pottery. A little digging exposed entire skeletons sitting upright, in the posture in which they had been buried,—who knows how many centuries before? Who were these ancient people, over whose unknown history the past had closed, as the earth had closed over their bodies? Perhaps these burial-mounds marked the scene of some great battle on the very spot where the modern fight took place. ”

“ Eventually, too, the inscription becomes effaced, and perhaps ere the bones of the deceased have mouldered away and mingled with their kindred dust, the epitaph that recorded for the admiration of posterity his many virtues and his vigorous talents, has faded from the stone—often, alas! only too fit an emblem of how speedily the memory of the dead may fade away out of the land of the living. ”

“ As the early worker in wools could not forget the beauties of earth, the foreground of many Gothic tapestries is sprinkled with the loved common flowers of every day, of the field and wood. This is one of the charming touches in early tapestry, these little flowers that thrust themselves with captivating inappropriateness into every sort of scene. The grave and awesome figures in the Apocalypse find them at their feet, and in scenes of battle they adorn the sanguinary sod and twinkle between fierce combatants. ”

“ The heavy rains of the winter season coursing down these declivities for so many centuries, have in places worn deep ravines in the mounds, through which the torrents have carried [61] the crumbling debris far out upon the plain. In this way many valuable relics have come to light; bits of pottery, inscribed bricks, seals and cylinders, the form and style of the inscriptions upon some of these indicating great antiquity.
These indications of greater antiquity include inscriptions on bricks for building purposes as well as those used for record and literature. ”

“ Thus a statue or statuette may either be carved straight out of a block of stone or wood, or first modelled in clay or wax, then moulded in plaster or some equivalent material, and then carved in stone or cast in bronze. A gem is wrought in stone by cutting and grinding. Figures in jeweller’s work are wrought by beating and chasing ”

“ Although of stone, the workmanship is so delicate and lace-like that we are not surprised that the epitaph of its builder buried below used to read that he calmly awaited the Judgment Day with no fear of the stone arch falling upon him. ”

“ The dead, perhaps occasionally embalmed, were buried in shaft tombs hewn deep in the rock; or in "beehive"-shaped sepulchres with chambers, often sunk in the side of a hill. With the dead were laid their arms of bronze, golden ornaments, crystal and ivory, and silver, and cups and vases of peculiar fashion, fabric, and decoration. ”

“ The love of distorted lines is carried to the utmost possible lengths. You see nothing but gilding, incrustation, breccia, and various-coloured marbles, rumpled about as if they were cloth and not stone, garlands of flowers, lovers'-knots, and bloated angels, all coloured and painted in the most profuse manner and sublime bad taste. ”

“ Time is modelling now, instead of art. Miles of ancient pottery and tiles, hardly allowing the blades of corn to grow among the ruins; sheep-tracks among the massive foundations; asses loaded with brush-wood, from shrubs growing in the courts of ancient palaces and temples; shepherds with their flocks, the bells of the goats heard from among the rocks; tombs and sarcophagi of ancient heroes, covered with moss, some broken and some entire; fragments, and ornaments, [Pg 167] and stones containing mutilated inscriptions;—these are the objects, which Platæa now presents. ”

“ In the graves containing skeletons are found costly silver and glass cups, pottery, wooden pails with metal mountings, drinking-horns or their fragments; gold, silver, bronze, or silver-gilt jewelry; great masses of glass, amber, gold and mosaic beads; metal mirrors (these are scarce) , bone combs, riding and driving harness, &c. The damaged weapons are often richly ornamented, and of exquisite workmanship.
A remarkable fact is the number of unmistakable Roman 249and Greek objects, and sometimes coins, which occur in the finds. ”

“ And another singular point in the business, to my mind, is that these stones, which men have been cutting into slabs, for thousands of years, to ornament their principal buildings with,—and which, under the general name of 'marble,' have been the delight of the eyes, and the wealth of architecture, among all civilised nations,—are precisely those on which the signs and brands of these earth agonies have been chiefly struck ”

“ Sculpture half destroyed, statues mutilated by the hand of man, or yielding to the decay of time, fantastic figures in every form of poetical grotesqueness, inscriptions scarcely legible, or of which the very allusion cannot be traced;—all these present a vague and mysterious analogy to those hieroglyphics of the elder world, of which the eye curiously follows the sharp outlines without the mind being able to comprehend or guess at the hidden meaning. ”

“ There is little doubt that but for the curse invoked upon the person who should disturb his bones, in the well-known lines on the slab which covers him, he would rest, like Napoleon, like Washington, in a fitting receptacle of marble or porphyry. In the transfer of his remains the curiosity of men of science and artists would have been gratified, if decay had spared the more durable portions of his material structure. ”

“ Much splendor there is, assuredly, and gold, and rich carving, and sumptuous marble, and opulent stuffs; even expatriated mantles and whole rooms, kidnapped from the harmonious surroundings where they were a perpetual joy—imported to discord with our modern alien habitats. ”

“ Time has added that, with the polish and dimming alternately of the marbles, the billowing of the pavement, the slanting of the columns, and last, but not least, the tarnishing of the gold and the granulating of the mosaic into an uneven surface: the gold seeming to have become alive and in a way vegetable, and to have faded and shrunk like autumn leaves. ”

“ Though your grave was neglected until the exact spot is no longer known, the stone, since raised near the place, is so often visited that, though it stands far from the path, a way to it has been worn in the grass by the feet of the many, who have come to breathe a sigh or drop a tear for poor Yorick. ”

“ Several of the ranchmen in the vicinity called my attention to articles made of pottery, and a varied assortment of interesting relics, which they had secured when tearing down the ruin, in which they claimed to have discovered dozens of human skeletons, one of gigantic stature (the usual story) , and a quantity of burial urns and other vessels of pottery and stone. These accounts were in some measure substantiated by the abundance of broken pottery, rough mortars, metates, and stone implements to be seen in the walls of the new acequia. ”

“ The woman of granite, built to last for ever, continued to look at the glowing logs which made a sort of fiery ruin on the white pile of ashes. "I will tell you how it is," I said. "When I have you before my eyes there is such a projection of my whole being towards you that I fail to see you distinctly. ”

“ THE works of art produced by the cave-men are, as we have already seen, of five kinds or classes— (1) All-round small statuettes, or "high-relief" carvings, in ivory, bone, or stone (examples of which are shown in Figs. 14, 25, 26, 27, 28 of the present chapter) ; (2) small engravings on bits of ivory, deer's antler, bone, or stone (examples are shown in Figs. 15, 16, 20, and 24) ; (3) large statues, hewn in rock, and left in place ”

“ Obsidian fragments, arrow and spear heads, knives, ornaments, heads and idols of terra cotta and stone, pottery whole or in fragments, human remains and burial deposits, some or all of which are strewn in so great abundance in the vicinity of most other American ruins, are here utterly wanting ”

“ Some labourers, when clearing out a stream in the neighbourhood, came across very numerous bones, and also a vast collection of objects of all descriptions, warlike and domestic, made of stone, bone, wood, bronze, and iron, and a few human remains. ”