NEW BOOKS.

POMPEII.

[The second and concluding volume of the descriptive history of Pompeii, in the Library of Entertaining Knowledge, is still more attractive than its predecessor. It contains the very domestic economy of the ancient inhabitants—chapters on domestic architecture, paintings and mosaics, streets and fountains, private houses, villas, and tombs; and, moreover, on the art of baking, and the forms of domestic utensils. We are, therefore, led through hall, parlour, bath, kitchen, and shop, with amusing minuteness; and, in the account of furniture and domestic implements, it is curious to observe, how far we are indebted to the ancients for the forms of similar contrivances now in use. One of the best passages in this portion of the work is the following, on the]

Lamps and Candelabra.

No articles of ancient manufacture are more common than lamps. They are found in every variety of form and size, in clay and in metal, from the most cheap to the most costly description. We have the testimony of the celebrated antiquary Winkelmann to the interest of this subject: "I place among the most curious utensils, found at Herculaneum, the lamps, in which the ancients sought to display elegance, and even magnificence. Lamps of every sort will be found in the museum at Portici, both in clay and bronze, but especially the latter; and as the ornaments of the ancients have generally some reference to some particular things, we often meet with rather remarkable subjects." A considerable number of these articles will be found in the British Museum, but they are chiefly of the commoner sort. All the works, however, descriptive of Herculaneum and Pompeii, present us with specimens of the richer and more remarkable class, which attract admiration both by the beauty of the workmanship, and the whimsical variety of their designs. We may enumerate a few which occur in a work now before us, "Antiquités d'Herculanum," in which we find a Silenus, with the usual peculiarities of figure ascribed to the jolly god rather exaggerated, and an owl sitting upon his head between two huge horns, which support stands for lamps. Another represents a flower-stalk, growing out of a circular plinth, with snail-shells hanging from it by small chains, which held the oil and wick. The trunk of a tree, with lamps suspended between the branches. Another, a naked boy, beautifully wrought, with a lamp hanging from one hand, and an instrument for trimming it from the other, the lamp itself representing a theatrical mask. Beside him is a twisted column, surmounted by the head of a Faun, or Bacchanal, which has a lid in its crown, and seems intended as a reservoir of oil. The boy and pillar are both placed on a square plateau, raised upon lions' claws. But, beautiful as those lamps are, the light which they gave must have been weak and unsteady, and little superior to that of common street-lamps, with which indeed they are identical in principle. The wick was merely a few twisted threads, drawn through a hole in the upper surface of the oil-vessel; and there was no glass to steady the light, and prevent its varying with every breeze that blew.

One of the most elegant articles of furniture in ancient use was the candelabrum, by which we mean those tall and slender stands which served to support a lamp, but were independent of and unconnected with it. These, in their original and simple form, were probably mere reeds, or straight sticks, fixed upon a foot by peasants, to raise their light to a convenient height; at least, such a theory of their origin is agreeable to what we are told of the rustic manners of the early Romans, and it is in some degree countenanced by the fashion in which many of the ancient candelabra are made. Sometimes the stem is represented as throwing out buds; sometimes it is a stick, the side branches of which have been roughly lopped, leaving projections where they grew; sometimes it is in the likeness of a reed or cane, the stalk being divided into joints. Most of those which have been found in the buried cities are of bronze; some few of iron. In their general plan and appearance there is a great resemblance, though the details of the ornaments admit of infinite variety. All stand on three feet, usually griffins', or lions' claws, which support a light shaft, plain or fluted according to the fancy of the maker. The whole supports either a plinth large enough for a lamp to stand on, or a socket to receive a wax-candle, which the Romans used sometimes instead of oil in lighting their rooms. Some of them have a sliding shaft, like that of a music-stand, by which the light might be raised or lowered at pleasure.

We may here say a few words on the art of inlaying one metal with another, in which, as in all ornamental branches of the working of metals, the ancient Italians possessed great skill. In the time of Seneca, ornaments of silver were seldom seen, unless their price was enhanced by being inlaid with solid gold. The art of uniting one metal to another was called by the general term ferruminare. Inlaid work was of two sorts; in the one, the inlaid work projected above the surface, and was called emblemata, as the art itself was called, from the Greek, embletice. It is inferred, from the inspection of numerous embossed vases in the Neapolitan Museum, that this embossed work was formed, either by plating with a thin leaf of metal figures already raised upon the surface of the article, or by letting the solid figures into the substance of the vessel, and finishing them with delicate tools after they were attached. In the second sort, the inlaid work was even with the surface, and was called crusta, and the art was called, from the Greek, empaestice. This is the same as the damask work so fashionable in the armour of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which is often seen beautifully inlaid with gold. It was executed by engraving the pattern upon the surface of the metal, and filling up the lines with fine plates of a different metal; the two were then united with the assistance of heat, and the whole burnished. Pliny has preserved a receipt for solder, which probably was used in these works. It is called santerna; and the principal ingredients are borax, nitre, and copperas, pounded, with a small quantity of gold and silver, in a copper mortar.

[The volume is enriched with four steel-plate engravings, and 154 cuts, of clever execution.]

THE WONDERS OF THE LANE.

Strong climber of the mountain's side,

Though thou the vale disdain,

Yet walk with me where hawthorns hide

The wonders of the lane.

High o'er the rushy springs of Don

The stormy gloom is rolled;

The moorland hath not yet put on

His purple, green, and gold.

Where dewy daisies gleam;

Burns bright in morning's beam.

To mountain winds the famish'd fox

Complains that Sol is slow,

O'er headlong steeps and gushing rocks

His royal robe to throw.

But here the lizard seeks the sun

Here coils, in light, the snake;

Its beauteous nest to make.

Oh! then, while hums the earliest bee

Where verdure fires the plain,

Walk thou with me, and stoop to see

The glories of the lane!

For, oh! I love these banks of rock,

This roof of sky and tree,

These tufts, where sleeps the gloaming clock,

And wakes the earliest bee!

As spirits from eternal day

Look down on earth, secure,

Look here, and wonder, and survey

A world in miniature:

A world not scorned by Him who made

E'en weakness by his might;

But solemn in his depth of shade,

And splendid in his light.

Light!—not alone on clouds afar,

O'er storm-loved mountains spread,

Or widely teaching sun and star,

Thy glorious thoughts are read;

Oh, no I thou art a wondrous book

To sky, and sea, and land—

A page on which the angels look—

Which insects understand!

And here, O light! minutely fair,

Divinely plain and clear,

Like splinters of a crystal hair,

Thy bright small hand is here!

Yon drop-fed lake, six inches wide

Is Huron, girt with wood;

This driplet feeds Missouri's tide—

And that Niagara's flood.

What tidings from the Andes brings

Yon line of liquid light,

That down from heaven in madness flings

The blind foam of its might?

Do I not hear his thunder roll—

The roar that ne'er is still?

'Tis mute as death!—but in my soul

It roars, and ever will.

What forests tall of tiniest moss

Clothe every little stone!—

What pigmy oaks their foliage toss

O'er pigmy valleys lone!

With shade o'er shade, from ledge to ledge,

Ambitious of the sky,

They feather o'er the steepest edge

Of mountains mushroom-high.

Oh, God of marvels! who can tell

What myriad living things

On these gray stones unseen may dwell!

What nations, with their kings!

I feel no shock, I hear no groan,

While fate, perchance, o'erwhelms

Empires on this subverted stone—

A hundred ruined realms!

Lo! in that dot, some mite, like me,

Impelled by woe or whim,

May crawl, some atom's cliffs to see—

A tiny world to him!

Lo! while he pauses, and admires

The works of nature's might,

Spurned by my foot, his world expires,

And all to him is night!

Oh, God of terrors! what are we?—

Poor insects sparked with thought!

Thy whisper, Lord, a word from thee,

Could smite us into naught!

But should'st thou wreck our father-land,

And mix it with the deep,

Safe in the hollow of thy hand

Thy little one will sleep.

Amulet.