with, both in land and sea affairs. Sylla, become haughty by taking Jugurtha prisoner, had the humiliating event engraven on the seal with which he constantly sealed his letters. This (says Plutarch) touched Marius to the quick; so slight and frivolous was the beginning of the enmity of those celebrated rivals, which afterwards produced such implacable animosity, and caused so much Roman blood to be shed. Scipio Africanus bore on his seal the portrait of Syphax, whom he had conquered. These instances sufficiently shew that engraved stones, however various their subjects, served the ancients as seals. The primitive christians, living among the Greeks and Romans, retained the same customs; but regarding with horror every thing that looked like paganism, and most of the subjects of seal-rings forming some superstitious rite, they adopted seals of their own invention, and by which they might be more easily recognised to each other. Clemens of Alexandria exhorts them to engrave symbols which should remind them of the mysteries of religion. They used the monogram of Jesus, a dove, a fish, an anchor, the ark of Noah, and the boat of St. Peter. These pious images were not favourable to the arts; they had neither variety nor imagination. The christian religion having spread over Europe, the universe was changed, and exhibited a new spectacle. Engraved gems were not as heretofore used on almost every occasion. During several ages they were used as seals to give authenticity to public acts. Princes had not always artists near them, and often adopted some ancient gem. Pepin sealed with an Indian Bacchus, and Charlemagne sometimes with a Jupiter Serapis; heads which, probably, they imagined were those of St. Paul or St. Peter. But the barbarism of the middle ages spread its clouds, and an intellectual night set in. The nobility were not any more solicitous to procure a beautiful work of art; they stamped their feudal and tyrannic charts with a seal, rude and heavy as their souls and their swords; the pommel of which latter more than once served as their seal, at a time they could not subscribe their names. Even the magic lustre of the ring never dazzled their ferocious eye. Ancient gems were dispersed and lost to the world; and many are still dug out of the earth. The classical muse of Mr. Rogers observes, Their hardness has enabled them to resist both the fire and a collision with other substances, while their minuteness has rescued them from the barbarians. They were sometimes used to adorn the altar-pieces, to stud the golden chalices of the abbeys, and border the chests of relics; in this degraded state the finest gems which now embellish the museums of monarchs, and the cabinets of the curious, have been fortunately preserved. We owe much to the profound ignorance of the monks; to those who frequently could not read, the treasures of our literature; to men who, in respect to art, lived in total cecity, the finest relics of antiquity. Had they known as much as they have enabled us to know, it is probable that scarcely a gem would have reached, nor a manuscript been consigned to us; as relics of paganism the heavy hand of gothic destruction had crushed ages of taste. At length, when the liberal arts hung on the verge of ruin, the immortal MEDICI arose and all was sunshine! Then their eyes opened, and their hands laboured; antiquity scattered her models, and VALERIO DE VICENZA emulated their excellence. PIKLER, of recent celebrity, is, perhaps, in no way inferior to his predecessors, and posterity will pay its tribute to the merit of the living engravers of gems in our own country. The frigid disciple of the cynic school has sometimes exclaimed, "And had they perished, what had we lost?" Without adverting to the real value and beauty of the material on which gems are engraven, or the splendor and diversity of the colours, or that delight which even the vulgar eye takes in viewing precious stones, we are willing to confess that these are sensual and luxurious enjoyments, which none can participate in, but their opulent possessors. But the pleasures of the MIND, which gems communicate, are enjoyments for all, and are accessible to the solitary student. We find them easily, and we can purchase them cheaply; for the casts or impressions are as valuable as the originals, for the purposes of art, and for their varied information. We must visit museums to inspect marble statues; we must purchase medals to study medals; but we find every day persons who wear in their rings or seals ancient gems. To acquire some knowledge respecting such sources of instruction and pleasure, is a study happily adapted to a well educated mind. They preserve for us a multitude of signs and symbols interesting towards the history of the manners and customs of antiquity. The finest copies of statues and groupes, some of which still exist while others are lost, are executed on gems; the faces and features of illustrious men eminent for their genius or their power are faithfully retained often more perfectly than on medals, which are so frequently injured by friction and time. In gems, the artists have found an infinite number of subjects for their imitation from the age of Raphael and Michael Angelo to Reynolds and Fuseli; poets are not less indebted. From these precious treasures of antiquity we may every day learn more and more to perfect our taste, exercise our curiosity, and adorn our imagination with the most elevated and the most beautiful ideas. They constitute a library without books, a gallery of pictures without paintings, and sculpture without marble. |