150 CONSUMPTION OF THE CHAP. v. 



the gold and silver would suffer, comparatively 

 with the present time, little or no loss by fric- 

 tion in the use of it. Many of those appli- 

 cations of gold and. silver, which in the present 

 day contribute to its greatest waste, were ut- 

 terly unknown to the ancients, Some of them 

 have only been introduced into practice in 

 very modern times, and what had in some 

 measure been known to the ancients had only 

 become so less than one hundred years before 

 the reign of Augustus. The Romans were not 

 quite ignorant of the art of gilding, though they 

 had not brought it to the degree of perfection, 

 nor carried it on to the extent, which it has 

 attained in modern times. We are informed by 

 Pliny that the first gilding was seen in Rome 

 during the censorship of Lucius Mummius, 

 soon after the destruction of Carthage. 



The art of spreading out gold over a large 

 surface, as practised in the time of Pliny, seems 

 to have been plating rather than gilding. It 

 is shown by that author J , that by the hammer 

 gold could be so extended, that an ounce of it 

 would make seven hundred and fifty leaves, each 

 of them four fingers in breadth and in length. 

 When it is considered that our modern gold- 

 beaters have so much farther availed themselves 

 of the malleability of that metal as to make each 



1 Pliny, lib. xxxiii, cap. 3. 



