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dark veins intrude and spoil the beauty of the work. Notwlth- 

 .standing the general apparent uniformity of its texture, it oflFers 

 different varieties of aspect. It is always of a fine granular fracture, 

 yet this fvactuve is soinctinies combined with a slight tendency to 

 the flat splintery, in which case the stone is harder and more trans- 

 lucent than when it is purely graiuilar. When merely granular it 

 is som.'times dry and crumbly, precisely as if it had been exposed 

 to a high heat; it then loses nmch of its transparency, and is 

 called woolly bv sculptors. Its transparency is various, and in 

 some cases nearly equal to that of alabaster, (granular gypsum). 



'^ The bust of Marcellus in the Museum offers an example of a 

 very fine grained and extremely translucent marble, apparently of 

 this kind. The specimen em|)lovcd in the bust of Messalina is 

 equally remarkable for the fineness and beauty of its texture. In 

 a bust of a youthful Hercules in the same collection the identity 

 of the marble is marked bv the dark veins which are to be seen 

 in it ; but it is unnt'ceH.sarv to (-note individual specin\ens, as the 

 greatest number of the sculptures in this collection appear to have 

 been executed in Carrara marble. 



" The last of tiie antient marbles which I shall describe is that 

 of Pentelicus, of which the quarries are probably still to be found 

 in the vicinity of Athens, although they have not been investigated 

 by modern travellers. But we are in possession of numerotis 

 specimens of sculpture in this stone, from which we are able to 

 determine its qualities; two are to be seen in the British Museum. 

 Of these there is the bust of a Philosopher, of, apparently, antient 

 and very dry workuianship : the other is the celebrated Disco- 

 bulus. It is known that Myron the Athenian, who flourished 

 about 440 A.C. executed a work of this character in bronze: 

 but we have no evidence respecting the marble statue, and artists 

 have therefore remained in doubt whether it was executed by him- 

 self or was a copy by another hand. This question cannot be 

 positively decided by the sculpture itself, however high its merits. 

 In the mean time a step is gained by the mineralogical investi- 

 gation of the material, and thus mineralogy is capable of throwing 

 light on the history of the arts. The substance in which it is 

 wrought must therefore be considered a sufficient proof of the an- 

 tiquity of the copy, if it be such, as well as of its having been ex- 

 ecuted at Athens, suice the quarries of Pentelicus were abandoned 

 in consequence of their defects, as soon as those of Carrara and 

 Luna were known. Although it is difficult or impossible to de- 

 termine this period, yet as so few works in Pentelic marble poste- 

 rior to the time of Phidias and of Myron have descended to us, it 

 is probable that little use was made of those quarries after the pe- 

 riod of these artists. We are therefore, perhaps, entitled to con- 

 clude that the Discobulus of the Townlcy collection is an Athe- 

 nian 



