Note (return) — NEW BOOKS.

Still, though the Romans had not advanced so far in art as to apply glass-chimneys and hollow circular wicks to their lamps, they had experienced the inconvenience of going home at night through a city ill-paved, ill-watched, and ill-lighted, and, accordingly, soon invented lanterns to meet the want. These we learn from Martial, who has several epigrams upon this subject, were made of horn or bladder;—no mention, we believe, occurs, of glass being thus employed. The rich were preceded by a slave bearing their lantern. This, Cicero mentions, as being the habit of Catiline upon his midnight expeditions; and when M. Antony was accused of a disgraceful intrigue, his lantern-bearer was tortured, to extort a confession whither he had conducted his master.4 One of these machines, of considerable ingenuity and beauty of workmanship, was found in Herculaneum in 1760, and another, almost exactly the same, at Pompeii, a few years after.