heir designs. We may
enumerate a few which occur in a work now before us, 'Antiquites
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 on 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
from 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 these lamps are, the light which they gave
must have been weak and unsteady, and little superior to that of the
old-fashioned common lamps, with which 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.

"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
poorly paved, watched and 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. One of these machines, of considerable ingenuity and beauty of
workmanship, was found in Herculaneum, and another almost exactly the
same, at Pompeii a few years after. In form it is cylindrical, with a
hemispherical top, and it is made of sheet-copper, except the two main
pieces, which are cast. The bottom consists of a flat, circular copper
plate, supported by three balls, and turned up all