ATHENS. 277 
relate only to the ceremonies of the bath and of CHAP. 
the toilet; or to the dances, and the games, as 
they were celebrated at the Grecian festivals. 
The subject of Grecian painting has insensibly 
led to that of the terra-cotta vases, because these 
have preserved for us the most genuine speci- 
mens of the art as it existed in the remotest 
periods of its history ; and we now see that the 
method employed by the earliest Grecian artists 
in their monochromatic painting is still used by 
Athenian workmen in the manufacture of their 
idol pictures. The silver shrines with which 
such pictures are covered, especially in Russia, 
having holes cut in them to shew the faces and 
hands of their Saints and Ftrgins, exhibit exactly 
the sort of superficies used upon these occasions 
for laying on the parts of the painting; and it 
is very probable that the Russian painters, who 
manufacture these images for sale, received from 
the Greeks, with their religion, this method of 
preparing them. A curious piece of chicanery 
is practised by the Russian dealers in this species 
of holy craft. The silver shrine is supposed to 
had in his possession an ivory bow, brought thence by Commodore 
RiUings; on which the natives were represented as engaged in 
fishing, &c. : the figures, delineated in a black eolour, perfectly 
resembled the paintings OB the oldest terra-cotta vases. 
