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NAXIUM.
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197
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so
little room for their application. Indeed every really antique cameo on
a large scale retains traces that show distinctly how the superfluous
parts of the upper stratum have been excised by means of circular
perforations.
Sir
G. Wilkinson is also of opinion that the Egyptians performed their
stupendous sculptures in Basalt, Granite, and other hard rocks, that
now speedily turn the edge of the best steel chisels, by using bronze
tools constantly supplied with Emery-dust, the tool serving only as a
medium for driving the cutting particles into the stone. The interior
of the hieroglyphics certainly has every appearance of having been bruised in
by some such agency. And connected with this application of the
mineral, a circumstance arrests our attention which at the first view
must strike every one as utterly at variance with the usual order of
things. It is the phenomenon that so many, and widely separated, races
should at the first dawn of their civilization have attained to the
fullest proficiency in all the mechanical processes of what is
assuredly one of the most refined of the arts belonging to luxurious
opulence, the art of engraving in " Hard Stones." The strongest
illustrations of this fact, and those too the furthest removed from
each other in time as well as in place, are to be discovered amongst
the remains of the Assyrians and of the Aztecs : the cylinders of the
first in Hematite and Agate, the idols of the latter in Jade and
Amazon-stone.
But
the apparent inconsistency vanishes upon a nearer insight into the "
prehistoric annals " of the progress of the human race in the arts of
life. The steps, at least in its earliest stages, have been the same
pretty nearly for all nations as well as for all ages : for one common
instinct has suggested the appliance of similar natural materials to
the supplying of similar common wants. The weapons, tools, jewels, of
primitive man have ever
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