In the construction of their vessels considerable skill was displayed: the planks were united by iron or copper nails, and the seams stopped with rushes or tow. An outer coating of wax and rosin was commonly overlaid; in some cases black pitch, while in others sheet-lead was added, secured by copper nails. Harbors were constructed, defended by artificial break-waters; with quays for unlading; porticoes and a temple for the votive offerings of the prosperous voyager; warehouses for goods; the usual apparatus of rings and posts for mooring vessels, and a sloping bank on which to haul them up, if a stay were contemplated. Colossal statues and lighthouses were erected at their entrance. Dry docks for building or repairing, rope-walks, magazines for stores, and other necessary conveniences, completed the portal arrangements. We have thus passed in review many of the most striking results of the useful arts of Greece and Rome. We have seen these results often rivaling, sometimes even superior to those of our own industry. And now let us pause for one moment, to regard the crowning development of the useful arts of the old world. We see the polished Roman dwelling amidst all the appliances for luxury, splendor, and utility which art, the minister of man, and the adapter of nature, could then gather around him. The marble palaces, the elaborate tissues of the loom, the polished masterpieces of the artificer, the paintings, the sculptures, the mouldings, and the rare devices of the engraver were one and all to him so perfect, that he doubted not they would remain forever the unsurpassed ornaments of the Queen of Nations. A few centuries, and how changed the scene! The iron bond that held together the civilized world in one vast whole has been torn asunder, and we see a rude barbarian spurning with his foot the delicate masterpieces of finished art. Or still later, perhaps, a half-naked savage wanders above the ruins of the buried cities, without a thought of the rich treasures of human industry hidden in the earth beneath him. The new birth of Freedom is for a time the death of Industry. But new life is following close on this death--a stronger, healthier vitality, more mighty in its development, and crowned by yet higher results. Amid the blackest night of anarchy and rapine, man--“the minister and interpreter of nature”--is busy kindling torches to scatter the darkness. Some imperishable monuments of antiquity were powerful agents in preserving the useful arts to man. As the aqueducts of ancient Rome, conquering the attacks of Time, and the destroying hand of the barbarian, still continued to lead pure streams to the seven-hilled city, so did a knowledge of the useful arts flow in manifold channels from the old world to the new, and Italy became to the moderns what Greece had been to the ancients--the nursing-mother of the arts, and the refiner of nations.