substance himself, and that the case was the same with most of the gold-beaters in Germany. Even in England, in the year 1763, this art was known only to two or three persons, who practised it as a business, but kept it so secret that Lewis was not able to obtain a proper account of it1. In Ireland also this skin is prepared and sent to England. When the French, in the beginning of the revolutionary war, hoped to out-manœuvre the Germans by the use of aerostatic machines, it became of some importance to them to obtain a supply of these skins. On this account, the Commission des armes et poudres drew up instructions for preparing them, which they caused to be printed and distributed to all the butchers. Strasburg they were printed in French, and at the same time in German, but in many parts faulty and unintelligible.

At

About the year 1621, Mersenne excited general astonishment, when he showed that the Parisian gold-beaters could beat an ounce of gold into 1600 leaves, which together covered a surface of 105 square feet. But in 1711, when the pellicles, discovered by the Germans, came to be used in Paris, Reaumur found that an ounce of gold, in the form of a cube, five and a quarter lines at most in length, breadth, and thickness, and which covered only a surface of about twenty-seven square lines, could be so extended by the goldbeaters as to cover a surface of more than one hundred and forty-six and a half square feet. This extension, therefore, is nearly one-half more than was possible about a century before.

When these skins are worn out by the hammer of the goldbeater, they are employed, under the name of English skin, for plasters, or properly to unite small wounds. By the English they are called gold-beaters' skin3; but, since silk covered with isinglass and Peruvian balsam, which in Germany is named English plaster, for the Germans at present call every thing English, has become the mode, this skin is much less used. I mention this that I might have an op

1 Zusammenhang der Künste. Zurich, 1764, 8vo, i. p. 75. For further information see Traité des Monnoies, par Abot de Bazinghen. Paris, 1764, 4to, i. p. 102.

2 Rutty's Natural History of Dublin, 1772, 2 vols. 8vo, i. p. 264. 3 Von Uffenbach Reisen, iii. p. 218.

4 I was told that Professor Pickel of Würzburg prepares gold-beaters' skin by means of a varnish, which renders it fitter for use; and that a stu

portunity of remarking, that in the middle of the twelfth century, in the Levant at least, a very thin pellicle was in like manner used for wounds. For when the emperor, John Comnenus, accidentally wounded himself in the hand with a poisoned arrow while hunting, a piece of skin, which, from the name and description may be considered the same as that used at present by the gold-beaters, was applied to the wound. The emperor, however, died in consequence of this wound, after it had become inflamed under the pellicle, which, in large wounds, and when the skin is suffered to remain too long, is commonly the case, though the poison alone would have been a sufficient cause of death. Reaumur and others are astonished that artists should have sought for and found a part of their apparatus in the bowels of an ox; but I am or opinion that this pellicle, which is sometimes separated in washing and cleaning the bowels, was first observed by the butchers, and made known by them as a plaster; and that it came into request among the German gold-beaters, as the finest of all the pellicles then known, in the beginning of the seventeenth century.

The art of gilding, and particularly unmetallic bodies, was much facilitated by the invention of oil-painting; but it must be acknowledged that the process employed by the ancients in cold-gilding was nearly the same as that used at present. Pliny says that gold leaves were applied to marble with a varnish, and to wood with a certain kind of cement, which he calls leucophoron. Without entering into any research respecting the minerals employed for this cement, one may readily conceive that it must have been a ferruginous ochre, or kind of bole, which is still used as a ground (poliment, assiette)2. But gilding of this kind must have suffered from dampness, though many specimens of it are still preserved. Some of the ancient artists, perhaps, may have employed resinous substances, on which water can produce very little effect.

That gold-leaf was affixed to metals by means of quicksilver, with the assistance of heat, in the time of Pliny, we are told by himself in more places than one. The metal to be gilded was prepared by salts of every kind, and rubbed with pumice

dent of that place had found out the art of making it transparent, in order that the wound might be seen.

1 Lib. xxxiii. § 20, p. 616.

2 Plin. lib. xxxv. § 17, p. 685.

stone in order to clean it thoroughly, and to render the surface a little rough'. This process is similar to that used at present for gilding with amalgam, by means of heat, especially as amalgamation was known to the ancients. But, to speak the truth, Pliny says nothing of heating the metal after the gold is applied, or of evaporating the quicksilver, but of drying the cleaned metal before the gold is laid on. Had he not mentioned quicksilver, his gilding might have been considered as that with gold-leaf by means of heat, dorure en feuille à feu, in which the gold is laid upon the metal after it has been cleaned and heated, and strongly rubbed with blood-stone, or polished steel. Felibien was undoubtedly right when he regretted that the process of the ancients, the excellence of which is proved by remains of antiquity, has been lost.

False gilding, that is, where thin leaves of a white metal, such as tin or silver, are applied to the article to be gilded, and then rubbed over with a yellow transparent colour, through which the metallic splendour appears, is much older than I believed it to be in the year 1780. The process for this purpose is given by the monk Theophilus, whose fragments were first printed in 17819. According to his directions, tin beat into thin leaves was to be rendered of a golden yellow colour by a vinous tincture of saffron, so that other pigments could be applied over it. The varnish or solution of resin in spirit of wine or oil, used for this purpose at present, appears not then

1 Lib. xxxiii. § 32, p. 622. "Cum æra inaurantur, sublitum bracteis pertinacissime retinet. Verum pallore detegit simplices aut prætenues bracteas. Quapropter id furtum quærentes ovi liquore candido usum eum adulteravere." See also sect. 42, p. 626. I acknowledge that this passage I do not fully comprehend. It seems to say that the quicksilver, when the gold was laid on too thin, appeared through it, but that this might be prevented by mixing with the quicksilver the white of an egg. The quicksilver then remained under the gold; but this is impossible. When the smallest drop of quicksilver falls upon gilding, it corrodes the noble metal, and produces an empty spot. It is therefore incomprehensible to me how this could be prevented by the white of an egg. Did Pliny himself completely understand gilding? Perhaps Pliny only meant to say, that many artists gave out the cold-gilding, where the gold-leaf was laid on with the white of an egg, as gilding by means of heat. I shall here remark, that the reader may spare himself the trouble of turning over Durand's Histoire Naturelle de l'Or et d'Argent, Londres 1729, fol. This Frenchman did not understand what he translated.

2 Principes de l'Architecture. Paris, 1676, 4to, p. 280. 3 Lessing zur Geschichte und Litteratur, vi. p. 311.

to have been known. But in the sixteenth century this art was very common; and instructions respecting it were given by Garzoni1, Cardan 2, Caneparius3 and others in their writings. About the same period a pewterer at Nuremberg, named Melchior Koch, was acquainted with the art of communicating a golden colour, in the like manner, to tin goblets and dishes. He died in 1567; and with him, as Doppelmayer says, the art was lost. A method of applying a white metal to paper, and then drawing over it a gold varnish, has been known in China since the earliest periods. At present this method of gilding is practised more in Sicily than in any other country. It appears also to have been used, at an early period, for gilding leather and leather tapestry; and this perhaps was first attempted at Messina, as we are told by John Matthæus, who, however, in another place ascribes the invention to a saint of Lucca, named Cita. But gilt leather was made as early as the time of Lucian, who conjectures that Alexander the impostor had a piece of it bound round his thigh. The dress of the priests, on the festival of Bacchus, was perhaps of the same kind?.

FUR DRESSES.

As long as mankind lived under palm-trees in their original country, between the tropics, they had no occasion to provide either food or clothing: the former was spontaneously supplied by the earth, that is, without care or labour; and the latter in that warm climate was superfluous. The art of cultivating plants, and that of preparing clothes, were not innate, but first taught by necessity; and this did not exist till men, in consequence of their increase, were obliged to spread towards both the poles. In proportion as they removed from

1 Piazza Universale. Venet. 1610, 4to, p. 281. 2 De Rerum Var. xiii. cap. 56.

4 Mémoires concernant les Chinois, xi. p. 351.

3 De Atramentis.

5 De Rerum Inventoribus, Hamb. 1613, 8vo, pp. 41, 37.

6 Luciani Opera, ed. Bipont. v. p. 100. 7 Plutarchi Sympos. iv. in fine.

their former abode, provisions became scarcer, and the climate colder. Hence arose the breeding of cattle, as well as agriculture; and men then first ventured on the cruelty of killing animals, in order that they might devour them as food, and use their skins to shelter them against the severity of the weather.

At first these skins were used raw, without any preparation; and many nations did not till a late period fall upon the art of rendering them softer, and making them more pliable, durable, and convenient. As long as mankind traded only for necessaries, and paid no attention to ornaments, they turned the hairy side towards the body; but as the art of dressing skins was not then understood, the flesh side must have given to this kind of clothing, when the manners of people began to be more refined, an appearance which could not fail of exciting disgust. To prevent this the Ozola inverted the skins, and wore the hair outwards; and in this manner some account for the bad smell which exhaled from their bodies'. This custom, however, was so general, that Juvenal, where he describes a miserly person, says, "to guard himself against the cold he does not wear the costly woollen clothing of the luxurious Romans, but the skins of animals, and these even inverted, that is to say, with the hairy side turned inwards, without caring whether the appearance be agreeable or not." In what manner the art of tanning was afterwards found out, Goguet has endeavoured to conjecture from the accounts given by travellers, in regard to the savages in the northern parts of America and Asia, but particularly in regard to the Greenlanders. The far more ingenious method of manufacturing wool, first into felt and then into cloth, seems to have been discovered by the inhabitants of temperate districts, where the mildness of the winter rendered fur dresses unnecessary.

The sheep came from Africa; but in that country it has hair and not wool; and it is only in colder climates that the former acquires a woolly nature. If it be true that a Hercules first brought this species of animal from Africa to Greece, that improvement may have first been effected in the latter country; in which case it is probable that the first 1 Pausan. x. 38. p. 895. 2 Sat. xiv. 185.

3 Varro De Re Rust. lib. i. 1, 6.