2/6 ATHENS. 
CHAP, these exhibit red figures upon a black ground ; 
the beautiful red colour being due solely to the 
fine quality of the clay: the effect was after- 
wards heightened by the addition of an outline, 
at first rudely scratched with the point of a 
sharp instrument, but in the best ages of the 
Arts carefully delineated; and often tinted with 
other colours, in so masterly a style, that it 
has been said Raphael, under similar circum- 
stances, could not have produced any thing 
superior, either in beauty or correctness 1 . But 
the vases which are characterized by such per- 
fection of the art, rarely exhibit paintings of 
equal interest with those fabricated at an earlier 
aera. The designs upon the latter generally 
serve to record historical events ; or they repre- 
sent the employments of man in the earliest ages ; 
either when engaged in destroying the ferocious 
animals which infested his native woods, or in 
procuring by the chase the means of his sub- 
sistence 2 . The representations upon the former 
(1) See the observations of D'Hax-earville, Italinski, Sir if. 
Hamilton, &c. &c. 
(2) Monochromatic paintings upon irory have been found where 
it might be least expected that any thing resembling the arts of 
JStruria or of Greece would be discovered ; namely, among the 
Alemto* Isles, between North America, and Kamchatka. The author 
had 
