It is highly probable that a limpid brook was the first mirror[136], but we have reason to think that artificial mirrors were made as mankind began to exercise their art and ingenuity on metals and stones. Every solid body, capable of receiving a fine polish, would be sufficient for this purpose; and indeed the oldest mirrors mentioned in history were of metal. Those which occur in Job[137] are praised on account of their hardness and solidity; and Moses relates[138], that the brazen laver, or washing-basin, was made from the mirrors of the women who had assembled at the door of the tabernacle to present them, and which he caused them to deliver up. As the women appeared in full dress at divine worship, it was necessary for them to have looking-glasses after the Egyptian manner. With these the washing-basins, according to the conjecture of most interpretators, were only ornamented, covered, or perhaps hung round; and Michaelis[139] himself was once of this opinion. But why should we not rather believe that the mirrors were melted and formed into washing-basins? As soon as mankind began to endeavour to make good mirrors of metal, they must have remarked that every kind of metal was not equally proper for that use, and that the best could be obtained only from a mixture of different metals. In the mirrors however which were collected by Moses, the artists had a sufficient stock of speculum metal, and were not under the necessity of making it themselves; and for this reason they could much more easily give to the whole basin a polished surface, in which the priests, when they washed, might survey themselves at full length. At any rate such a basin would not be the only one employed instead of a mirror. Artemidorus[140] says that he who dreams of viewing himself in a basin, will have a son born to him by his maid. Dreams indeed are generally as groundless as this interpretation; but one can hardly conjecture that Artemidorus would have thought of such a dream, had it not been very common for people to contemplate themselves in a basin. There were formerly a kind of fortune-tellers, who pretended to show in polished basins to the simple and ignorant, what they wished to know[141]. The ancients also had drinking-vessels, the inside of which was cut into mirrors, so disposed that the image of the person who drank from them was seen multiplied[142]. Vopiscus mentions, among the valuable presents of Valerian to the emperor Probus, when a tribune, a silver cup of great weight, which was covered on the inside with mirrors of this sort[143].