102 Dr. Mac Culloch's Sketch of the 



marble, from its rarity, its beauty, and its indispensible necessity 

 in the art of sculpture. It has at different times formed an object 

 of anxious research in this country, and premiums have been held 

 out for it by the Society of Arts. It has consequently been found in 

 various parts of Scotland, as well as in Ireland, but no native speci- 

 mens have yet been introduced into the arts. As the causes which 

 have impeded their introduction have hitherto been such as may be 

 considered adventitious, being of a commercial nature and not 

 founded on any experience of their physical defects, it has been 

 hoped that they might by perseverance and time be removed, and 

 that the statuary marbles of this country might at some future day 

 supersede the necessity of importing this article. It will not there- 

 fore be a misplaced inquiry to examine the several properties of those 

 marbles which have at different times held a place in the estimation 

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

 particularly with that of Sky now under review, the most abun- 

 dant and certainly the most specious of all those which have yet 

 been found in Britain. The inquiry is the more necessary, as the 

 several circumstances in which white marbles differ, 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 sculptors themselves. 



The value of this substance in those distant periods when the arts 

 of Greece flourished, occasioned an industrious research after a 

 material in which the sublime ideas of its artists could be embodied. 

 Accordingly many quarries have been wrought 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. These marbles 

 were of various qualities, and examples of them are still to be seen 

 in ancient statues, although with regard to many of them, a species of 



