Notices respecting New Booh. 303 



most obviously valuable variety is the white, which seems to possess 

 most of the qualities requisite tor the purposes of statuary. 



''Few substances in the catalogue of those with which oeco- 

 nomical mineralogy is concerned have excited more interest than 

 statuary marble, from its rarity, its beautv, and its indispensable 

 necessity ni the art of sculpture. It has at diflferent times 

 .ormed an object of anxious research in this comitry, and pre- 

 miums have been held out for it by the Society of Arts. It has 

 consequently been found in various parts of St-otland, as well as 

 m Ireland, but no native specimens have yet been introduced into 

 the arts As the causes which have impeded their introduction 

 liave hitherto been such as may be considered adventitious, being; 

 o. a commercial nature, and not founded on any e.-iperience of 

 tlieir physical defects, it has been hoped that' they might by 

 perseverance and time be removed, and that those statuary mar- 

 hies of this country might at son.e future day supersede the 

 necessity of importing this article. It will not" therefore be a 

 misplaced inquiry to examine the several properties of those mar- 

 bles w'hich have at ditferent times held a place in the estima- 

 tion of artists, and to compare them with our own specimens 

 more particularly with that of Sky, now under review, the most 

 abundant and certainly the most specious of all those whicli 

 have yet been found in Britain. The inciui'rv is the more ne- 

 cessary as the several circumstances in which white marbles 

 diiter, do not appear to have been generally attended to, and as an 

 undue value seems in some instances to have been fixed on our 

 own in popular estimation, although not in that of sculotoi-s 

 tliemseives. i'v"«a 



" i;i^e vah.e of this substance in those distant periods when 

 Jie arts of Greece flourished, occasioned an industrious research 

 alter a material in which the sublime ideas of its artists could be 

 embodied. Accordingly many quarries have been wroutrht in 

 ancient times of which little has descended to us but the names 

 and a few of the works which were executed from their produce' 

 Ihese marbles were of vaiious qualities, and examples of them 

 arc still to be seen in ancient statues; although with regarcTto 

 many of them, a species of evidence, often little better than con- 

 jectural, has guided sculptors and mineralogists in their attempts 

 to determine the quarries from whence they were derived ^ 

 Among hese the quarries of Parosc afforded a marble (the often-' 

 quoted lychiutes of Pliny) in which it is asserted thai the cele- 

 biated Venus was wrought, as well as some others to which we 



c Biitish Muscuin winch seem to have been executed in this 

 stone, or in one at least of analogous character. 



'■ Of 



