REVIEWS HISTORY OF ANCIENT POTTERY. 257 



it illustrates the ancient Egyptian mode of using the potter's wheeL 

 It may also not unfitly serve to illustrate' the beautiful metaphor of 

 Isaiah : " But now, O Lord, thou art our ^Father ; we are the clay^ 

 and thou our Potter; and we are all the work of thy hand." On 

 the subject of the potter's wheel, so important in relation to the 

 development of fictile art, Mr. Birch remarks : 



" The application of clay to the making of vases, probably soon caused the in- 

 vention of the potter's wheel, before which period only vessels fashioned by the 

 hand, and of rude unsymnaetrical shape, could have been made. But the applica- 

 tion of a circular lathe, laid horizontally, and revolving on a certain pivot, on 

 which the clay was placed, and to which it adhered, was in its day a tridy wonder- 

 ful advance in the art. As the wheel spun round, all combinations of oval, 

 spherical, and cylindrical forms could be produced, and the vases became not 

 only symmetrical in their proportions, but true in their capacity. The invention 

 of the wheel has been ascribed to all the great nations of antiquity. It is repre- 

 sented in full activity in the Egyptian sculptures. It is mentioned in the Scrip- 

 tures ; and was certainly in use at an early period in Assyria. The Greeks and 

 Romans have attributed it to a Scythian philosopher, and to the States of Athens, 

 Corinth, and Sicyon, the three great rivals in the ceramic art. The very oldest 

 vases of Greece, some of which are supposed to have been made in the heroic 

 ages, bear marks of having been turned upon the wheel. Indeed, it is not possi- 

 ble to find any Greek vases except those made by the wheel or by moulds j 

 which latter process was applied only at a late period to their production." 



On the subject of the Grreek vases here referred to, Mr. Birch en- 

 larges in terms that would seem extravagant to any one unfamiliar 

 \Tith the grace and beauty of Hellenic fictile art, of which so many 

 exquisite specimens are accumulated in the Museum of which he is 

 so distinguished an officer. In form, they are worthy to stand along- 

 side of the works of the Parthenon ; while in their decorations we 

 have preserved to us the sole evidence of what Greek pictorial art 

 actually was in the age of Pericles. The marbles of that grand era 

 of art survive, mutilated, yet wonderful in the genius which their 

 fragments reveal ; but the painters of the same era are to us but 

 names, and the very stories preserved in evidence of their perfec- 

 tion, — as the competitive pictures of the curtain and the grapes, — 

 suggest to the modern critic a mere mimetic art, like that of our 

 Van Hiiysums of the modern Dutch School, rather than of the 

 Da Yinci and Raphael, who maintained the rank of their pictorial 

 creations alongside of that which the chisel of Aiichael Angelo re- 

 stored to the work of the sculptor. On these grounds, the painted 

 vases of ancient Grreek, Etruscan, and Italian art have a peculiar im- 

 portance, which attaches in an especial manner to those of Hellenic 

 origin, alike from their intrinsic value and from the fact that they 



