[31] Herod: Euterpe LXXXVI. Not that they were ignorant, probably, of glue made from the skins of animals, &c. The Romans had it, and, as Pliny says, preferred that made of _bulls’_ hides. [32] See the accounts given by all modern travellers. The extreme beauty and delicacy of structure of many of the Mosques and the Tombs of the Caliphs, ornamented, even to profuseness, with everything but imitations of animated beings, form a contrast almost extravagant, with the severe, if not sublime, masses of ancient Egypt. ESSAY II. OF ART IN ANCIENT ITALY[33]. Arts are advanced not so much by them that dare make a great show of Art, as by them that know how to find out what there is in Art. ISOCRATES. Honour doth nourish Arts, and we are all drawn by glory to take pains; as are also such things ever neglected, as are little regarded in the opinion of men. CICERO. It is very disagreeable to unlearn the learning of one’s youth, and to give up belief in certain things that seem, from our long familiar acquaintance, as if they made up a part of the system of nature itself. But so it must be, if we will give ourselves fair play in examining into the history of art or science, polity or commerce, in ancient Italy. In our early education it is Rome only to which the attention is directed. Rome is represented as first in arts and arms, as spreading civilisation along with her dominion: and, in short, Roman virtue and Roman greatness dazzle our young imaginations, till, seeing nothing but the glare of her meridian splendour, we forget to look whence and how it arose. Yet Italy must have had a long and not inglorious history before the seven-hilled city could boast of a shepherd’s hut, or the politic Romulus, if such a king ever reigned, found a village considerable enough to tempt him to make himself a king contrary to the custom of the neighbouring federal states, one of which, Cœre, had, not very long before his time, expelled its Lucumon (Mezentius) for little reason but that he had sought to change the annual magistracy into a monarchy for life[34]. This history will probably remain for ever obscure as to the particular facts relating to it, and the names of those who might have figured in it; because, the vainglory of the Romans, infecting even their writers, desired that their own history and their own monuments should stand foremost in the eyes of posterity; and though the ancient books existed, and the ancient language was still understood to a late period[35], no use was made of them by those who recorded the achievements of the Romans; and it is because they found it so difficult to conquer the Italian tribes, one by one, that we are led to form an idea of their strength and importance.