The Evansville daily journal. [volume] (Evansville, Ia. [i.e. Ind.]) 1848-1862, 1855-11-17
EVANSVILLE, IND, SATURDAY MORNING. NOVEMBER II, /
Gle 9aiIp geurnaI
THE LOST ARTS.

/ The Cincinnati Gazette gives the following
sketch of Wendell Phillips lecture on "The
Lost Arts" delivered last week, before the
Mercantile Library Association, of that city:
/ The object of the lecture was to show that
the ancients were not only acquainted with all
or nearly all the arts known to us, but with
many We did not know;-that our boasted
discoveries were only reproductions; and in
short that there was nothing new under the
sun.
The silks from Lyons and Paris, which
turned just half the world half crazy, were
not new. The newspaper jokes even, were
some of them ofa very respectable age. He
repeated some of them, at which the audience
laughed heartily, and traced them back beyond
the Christian Era. Two-thirds of the smiles
we got were excited by the wit of generations
that had been in their graves for two or three
thousand years.
The ancients excelled us in:
b. /. Glass. Our chemistry has not reached
the art of making it malleable, as did the
Egyptians, of making it resemble gems as
nearly as the Portland Vase, or ofcoloring it
permanently, as in old Cathedral windows.
The Telescope was older than written his
tory. Layard found the fragment Of one at
ENineveh, and Nero had an opera glass.
2. Color. In Sir Joshua REYNOLDS portraits.
the eyes have already lost their lustre, and the
lips are no longer red, while Cleopatra's seem
las fresh as when Anthony laid the sceptre of
the world at her feet
OF the shawls of Cashmere, England and
France don't know even at this day of what
they are made.
3. Metals. The ancients could temper
"copper" harder than our stee'. could make
keener sabres, which would cut floating floss.
and which never rusted. s-fF
4. Mechanics. have removed large
stones hundreds of miles; which we had no
means ef lifting They were acquainted with
vessels propelled by steam, with canals, locks,
with railways, and machinery for locomotive
upon them They had artificial roads from
ttheir cities to the seaboards These were
inland, perhaps for the reason that when the
men were away engaged in war, there was
danger that the traders visiting the port would
steal their women and children and sell them:
beautiful union ofpiracy and the slave-trade,
one of which has gone out of fashion and the
other coming in. Alexandria and Carthage
were the first cities built on the sea.
TIE lecturer then proceeded to show that the
Lancesterian system ofeducation was known
to the ancients, that table-tipping was 1900
years old, that Hobbs lock was taken from an
Egyptian model in the British Museum, and that
.Xenophon spoke of sherry cobblers. That
an; n;mai magnetism, hydropathy and balloons
were all known. The fine muslin now made,
contained l60 threads to the inch; but Sir
George Wilkinson had brought home from
Thebes mummy cloth of $40 threads to the
inch E
+ Eut he would not have the audience go away
Isupposing that he believed the ancients outdid
the nineteenth century. We excelled them,
if not in the arts we knew in the use we made
of our knowledge All they knew was hidden
in the breasts of priests, and used to overawe
the people. One thing we possessed which
they had not, and this made our arts universal
and enduring, it was the Printing Press. To
this, and to that democratic principle of the
Christian religion which teaches that man has
no right to know anything that he does not
make use of to his fellow, should we owe their
preservation, if at least it was Gods will that
they should be preserved. ao.a