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ALABASTRITES.                                    59
magnificence are yet preserved in some of the older Roman churches, relics of the times alluded to by Pliny ; but none have ever approached to the magnitude of those presented by Moham­med Ali to the new fabric of S. Paolo fuori le Mura, columns and pilasters, 40 feet long, each of a single block and the most beau­tiful quality. Under this Pacha the ancient Egyptian quarries had been re-opened, and furnished the material of which his sumptuous mausoleum at Cairo is exclusively constructed: a piece of magnificence beyond the ambition of even Nero.2
It is singular that Pliny should have noticed no other quarries of this marble than those in Asia and Egypt, for the mountain on which Volterra is built yields large blocks of a variety richer in point of colour than the Oriental, a warm brown variegated with lemon : this had been much in use with the Etruscans, as their sepulchral monuments remain to attest. The magnificent and huge vases, now exported from Tuscany, belong to the Volterran fabrique. It is indeed true that the Volterra stone differs che­mically from the Oriental, being a Sulphate of Lime or Compact Gypsum; but such a distinction would have had no significance in ancient mineralogy. Thus the Lygdinus subsequently mentioned as dug up in Paros, but in small slabs, never exceeding the measure required for a dish or a bowl, and equal to the Egyptian stone as a preservative of perfumes, was apparently Compact Gypsum, from its distinctive character adduced of superlative whiteness, " can-doris eximii." The fact that some of the sorts were burnt to lime and used in plasters (as depilatories ?) also indicates that the Onyx-marble included both the Carbonate and the Sulphate of Lime.
The French clearly distinguish the two species, confounded under the common name Alabaster in English, designating the hard Carbonate of Lime Albatre-Oriental when dappled, and Albatre-Onyx when regularly stratified: the softer Sulphate of Lime on the contrary (the common European kind) is their Albatre-gypseux, or Alabastrite.