IDENTIFICATION OF THE ARTISAN AND AETIST. 309 



of iN'aples; and I tbiuk very justly tlie remark is made by the editor iu 

 the fifth volume, that the whole modern civilized world, however vast it 

 may be, and however it may labor iu so many arts and so many trades, 

 does not and cannot exhibit even a small i^roportiou of that elegance 

 and ornament, varied in a thousand ways, and in innumerable most 

 fantastic modes, which are to be admired in the remains of furniture 

 found in Pompeii and Herculaneum — two cities which occupied so in- 

 significant a pla-ce in the ancient world. That is quite true. Now, 

 what are we to infer from this? There can be no doubt, as I have said, 

 on examining these beautiful objects, that they have been for common 

 use. There are scales, steelyards, which can only have been made 

 to weigh j)ro visions; the chains are most delicately worked ; the weight 

 is frequently a head with a helmet, most beautifully chiseled ; and so 

 genuine and true are these, so really intended forevery-day use, that 

 one of them has stamped upon it yet, the authentication made at the 

 capitol of the weights being just. This was a steelyard which was in 

 the kitcheif, and it was for the ordinary purposes of the house. There 

 are other large vessels which must have served for culinary jjurposes, 

 and of which the handles and the rings and the different parts are fin- 

 ished far beyond what the finest bronzes that are made now in Paris can 

 equal. What are we to conclude? You do not suppose these were the 

 designs of the Flaxmans and the Baileys of that day. Who ever heard of 

 a great artist in Pompeii and Herculaneum ? And how can you imagine 

 that every house furnished itself with what were considered exquisite 

 and extraordinary specimens of art for the use of their every-day life? 

 And then, where are their common utensils, if these are not they? If 

 these lamps were not what they burnt, if these candelabra were not the 

 shafts upon which they were hung, if these vessels were not those in 

 which they prepared their viands, where are those? Were they carried 

 away in the flight? But the most precious would surely be carried 

 away, and the commoner be left behind. Nothing of the sort. One 

 may see here everything is to be found; and everything is beautiful in 

 shape, and generally in finish. What are we to conclude ? Why, noth- 

 ing less than that the braziers who made these things were able to 

 make them. They came from the hands of the brass-founder: they 

 have been chiseled in the workshop ; they have been finished, not to 

 be put up in cabinets, but in order to be knocked about by servants. 

 Then here we have a state of art in which the jiroducer, the man who 

 makes, who manipulates, who handles the object of manufacture which 

 he x)roduces, was able to do what now defies almost our most superior 

 workmen. 



Now let us go to another part of the woild, and come to a later 

 period. Nuremberg, during the time which I have specified — between 

 1300 and the middle of 1500 — was a center of art, and especially 

 in all metal work. There is an observation of Hoffman, a German 

 writer, that Nuremberg was the cit}^ in which the artist and the crafts- 



