Ellsworth American. [volume] (Ellsworth, Me.) 1855-current, 1858-02-19

Wendell Phillips, Esq, of Boston
has recently been delivering most inter.
os,ing lecture on this subject before
several Of the Lycums Of New England.
The following is brief synopsis
The present arts we esteem our own
invention, but perhaps many of them
arc discoveries which existed almos,
before the Commencement Of history
/ We must except from these all those
arts which spring from the Imagination
fine arts, poetry, sculpture, &c. In
these the modern time is contented to
acknowledge its inferiority; and that it
is as much as we can expect to initiate
the first masters in these. Now this
exception covers much moro ground. -
For instance, do not mean merely that
S. akspeare borrowed the plots for
thirty of his plays from thirty Others,
who themselves had borrowed them
from the cast. do not mean that all
these novels, with which the novel read
ing world is delighted, are mere COM
bina,ions of a limited number of original
, stories.
Take our common newspaper jokes
and you would not be aware of their
antiquity. Then. again, some Of you
nav have read the tales of Baron Mum
chauscn. One Of his jokes was that
while riding in Russia he tried to play a
tune on a French horn, but before the
end of the tune 1t frozo UP, and in the
srring he was astonished to find it
thawing out and finishing the tune
And yet that was joke of a Roman
author little previous TO Jesus Christ.
| mi sht show you that these old Jokes,
may count themselves by thousands.
There are not more than two hundred
and fifty strictly original stories-and
these are taken apart and re-arranscd
indefinitely to form new ones-of these,
two hundred are not the products of
Europeans, and the origin of some is
! lost in remote antiquity. mean, also,
that in matters trivial in themselves, and
interviewer with daily lie, We are
borrowers from the ancients. Take the
pattern for ladies' dresses, which comes
to US from France twice a year, and
which the ladies' are delighted with, be-
cause they are nelc. When an English
manufacturer was asked before com
mi,tee of Parliment why the French
designs were so much superior to those
produeel in England, he replied that in
the French SCHOOL Of design. pupils were
educated for the traic--the pupil had
placel before him all the beautiful de-
s,1ns Of al ages, and thus feeding his
Imagination, he vas enabled to excel in
inycutin5 or Reproducing old designs in
new combinations.
We s5ould beware ofafIirmins A story
to b. false because it relates what we
have never seen, or cannot comprehend
\ Greek has left an account of the siege
Of Syracuse, and he tells us that when
they were bcsiegiug the city, Archinedcs
! erected a lever with which he littel the
! ships out of the water and dashed them
to pieces. TIE statement has been dis
believed, and regarded as an invention
Of the besiegcrs 70 account for a hard
won victory--but those acquainted with
the marvellous powers u the lever will
have no reason to doubt it. The same
writer states that when the remaining
ships rcmoyed - distance, A2chin!des
invented an apparatus waich set them
or fire by the rays Of the sun. Modern
experiments with lenses have shown Its
practiclbility. In the rcferlpccs which
| shall make to authors OF the first stand
ing. YOU are bound to give me candid
hearing.
Quite a laborcl work was recently
written in Italy, to show the aneients
had o knowledge of glass and on the
very day of It's publication, workmcu
engaged in excavation about the buried
city of Pompcii burst into a chamber
filled with glass There WAS plate glass,
and ground glass, and cut glass, and
pressed glass, and colored glass SO the
lie and the rctntatlon came face to face.
In the time OF the emperor Tiberius,
it was known how to make glass maliea-
bic, and a man appeared before the
AnAr4s.Ar-niA which he flung
upon the ground and then with L..-
mer effected the indentlons. The en-
peror, fcartsl that the art would render
valueles his monopoly ofthe silver mines,
caused the inventor and his secret to
perish together.
They have a vase in London, called
Portland vase, which was discovered
4 near Rome, and which was for long
time thought to be a gem, wrought into
its present form, and adorned with basso
relieve sculpture. lie sculpture. Re-
cent Investigations prove it to be merely
glass, highly finished and polished.
In the high cathedral at Milan, they
have a dish about sixteen inches wide,
out of which tradition says, the Savior
at his last supper \ law of li72
makes it death for any Que but a priest
TO touch it. The dish was supposed to
be made of a precious stone-but, wlcn
Napoleon conquered Italy, the dish went
with other treasures to France, where
the chemits pronounced it to be glass
When Napoleon fell, and all his treas
ures went back over the Alps, this dish
was returned to the cathedral, where it
is as carefully guarded as formerly.
Knight continue These accounts OF ear
Is glass; but the mott interesting qucs-
ton after all is, were the anclents ac-
quaintcd with the telescopes But here
the astronomers will tell you that the
Jews were acquainted with the fat that