s 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.]

[4] Val. Max. vi. 8.

* * * * *

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.
But here the titling[5] spreads his wing,
Where dewy daisies gleam;
And here the sunflower[6] of the spring
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;
And here the fire-tuft[7] hath begun
Its beauteous nest to make.
Oh! then, while hums the earliest bee
Where verdure fires the plain,
Walk thou with me, and stoop to