The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-11-11

FTO1l the I0ttoUtNf C0uftef-JOuf0nh
correspondent who writes us from Lex
ington under the name of ga Young Stu
dent, says he has seen it mentioned in one
of the newspapers that Wendell Phillips re-
Gently delivered lecture on the subject of
the lost arts, and requests us to tell him what
the lost arts are. Well do it. At least we'll
tell him what some of them are, but we write
late at night, on the eve of an important
election and must necessarily be brief. We
are not quite sure that we know what all the
lost arts are, as we had nothing to do with
losing them, and, indeed, were uuavoidably
absent when it was done. What little we
know about the matter though, is heartily at
the service of "a Young Student" whose
inquiring turn of mind ought to be en-
couraged.
The Egyptians-those antiquated cusses
who carved the Sphynx, erected the Pyra-
mids and built the splendid temples of Kar-
nae and Memphis and Luxor-p assessed the
art of hardening copper until 1t would cut
stone quite as well as steel does in our day.
The Egyptians, some of whom may have been
introduced to "a Young Student in the
unique though rather unanimated character
of mummies, had no STEEL And this is equal
to saying that they had no radical administra-
ton, for with such an administration they
would have had scarcely anything else but
steel. The art of hardening copper to that
extent is not known now, and is, therefore,
one of the lost arts.
The ''heathen Chinee," who, as Truthful
James tells us, ''for ways that are dark and
for tricks that are vain is peculiar" could
once turn out a porcelain tea-cup which when
empty was white and clear, without sign of
coloring, but which when filled with tea ex-
hiblted a number of pictures very prettily
colored. This was many years ago. The
last Chinaman who understood this beautiful
business happened to have no children to in
herit it, and he was mean enough-and we say
it in no spirit of unkindness to the Oriental
departed-to go up the spout and take the
secret along with him. Both his surviving
countrymen and the French have spent many
precious hour and many valuable dab of
porcelain clay in attempts to rediscover the
art, but in vain. That elegant trick, too, is
among the lost arts.
Damascus is the Oldest city in the world.
ga Young Student will find it laid down on
any authentic map of Central New York,
where nothing in the way of names of towns
and cities is anything at all unless il is
classic. They have large manufacturing
establishment there, employing nine hundred
able-bodied hands, which does nothing but
snatch classic names from ancient history and
! bestow them upon towns and villages.
This, however, by the way. The sword
blades that we're once made by the artisans of
Damascus were the most curious things of
| tne SOrC tnat can well DC imagined. You
could take one of them and tie it in knot,
or hammer it all day over a stump, and when
| you got done you would find the blade just as
! good as new, and some say little better.
| The manufacturers of these swords, who
were few in number, were very careful not to
let outsiders know how the thing was DONE
and when the last one of them was gathered
to his fathers the expectation of Damascus
blades gradually ceased. They were no
longer worth, exporting. The art of making
them was lost.
IA Young Student" of course, knows the
history of the Tyrian purple, and how it was
made and what it was like, and all that sort
of thing. At least we hope so, for we don't
know anybody else that does. All the leading
dyers of the world have been sighing for the
rediscovery of that royal color for centuries,
but it is generally understood that they have
sighed in vain. We think, though, that
although the art is lost, we have lost little
Of nothing besides the art. The chances are
that the two colors, Solferino and Magenta,
which Mr.. Perkins, of London, produced
from coal-tar, after two years of constant ex-
pertinent, are either quite as beautiful as
anything that Tyre could boast in her most
purple days.