very
remarkable objects was exhibited among the Russian goods in the London
Exhibition. The material of some of these vases is quartz rock, but
most are of a kind of pseudo jasper or pseudo jasper lava, of greenish
color, and extreme toughness and hardness, resisting almost every tool,
and requiring to be cut with emery, like the hardest gems. These rocks
chiefly exist in Siberia, beyond the Oural, and are in great abundance
and variety. The vases of jasper were worked at the imperial
manufactories of Ekaterinen-burg and Kolyvan. There almost the whole
work is performed by manual labor; the only machine used is a simple
lathe, on which the object to be turned is placed, and worked by iron
tools and emery. No tool will touch these stones, both chisels and
files of the hardest temper turning without producing any effect. The
time for furnishing vases of considerable magnitude is often many
years, and their value is calculated by the cost of the large
establishment kept at constant work. A large vase, measuring three
feet on each side, in a square form, was exhibited, hollow under the
rim, with foliage in the same, and was one of the great curiosities in
the Exhibition. Smaller vases, an olive-green jasper urn, decorated
with admirably worked foliage, in relief, from the imperial
manufactories, were Jikewise exhibited, all of which excited the
admiration of the spectators; and since the times of the Greeks and
Romans no such gigantic works, both in dimensions and weight, have been
wrought. The quantity of intaglios and cameos from the' ancient Greeks
and Romans is too numerous for giving them a space in this treatise,
for it would fill a whole book to specify the antiques which are
scattered around the world, in the various museums of Rome, Vienna,
Paris, London, Berlin, Dresden, and the private cabinets which have
for centuries existed in noble families.
According to their varieties, which are very numerous—
