162 



some years ago in Nortligate Street, in a lump of clay, absolutely 

 fresh as it left the Roman forge, with the hammer marks on 

 it, and free from even a speck of rust. In one of these little 

 chance accumulations of potters' earth, I found the broken 

 shell of an egg, with the yellow stiU bright on it : but after an 

 hour's exposure to the atmosphere the colour faded entirely 

 away, and the whole crumbled to pieces. 



VI. Of fine White Glass, the most expensive sort used by 

 the Romans, I have found a considerable quantity. The long 

 lapse of time has decomposed the surface, which sometimes 

 presents a beautiful silvery appearance, and with every variety 

 of iridescense, from the detachment of the thin silicious plates. 

 The fragments are mostly feet of vases, or similar vessels, 

 and necks of bottles with elongated li]DS. One part of a 

 little goblet is spirally striped with a pinkish hue ; it resembles 

 a small claret glass, with a stem of about a quarter of an inch, 

 between the bowl and the foot, but it is much thinner than a 

 wine glass of the present day. 



Two bottle-necks deserve a word in passing, from a contrivance 

 in their shape to enable the user to drop a fluid with greater 

 precision than would be possible with our phial bottles of the 

 present day. They have each a long projecting lip, in the 

 middle of which is a slight protuberance, made by pressing the 

 end of a square wire up against the under side of the lip while 

 the glass was red hot. This makes a slight impediment in the 

 pouring, so that the drops could be separately counted. Some 

 of my visitors have spoken of these vessels as "lachrymatories;" 

 but it seems more probable that they were perfume bottles, inas- 

 miich as the Romans were far more given to make other people 

 cry, than to shed tears into bottles on their own account. On 

 the other hand, perfumes were not only used on the person, but 

 added to wine, sometimes to the very serious enhancement of 

 its cost ; as hinted in one of Martial's epigrams in which two 

 men are talking of giving a wine party, when one of them offers 

 to pay for the wine if his friend will provide the perfume. 



There is also a long neck of a little vase, made of red-ware, 

 without a lip ; and this is the sort of vessel in which unguents 



