A constant source of employment to the workers in metal was the manufacture of arms, offensive and defensive. Among the latter may be mentioned shields, greaves, cuirasses, helmets, and coats of mail, consisting either of forged rings linked one within the other, or of scales and rings fastened to some firmly-woven linen or woollen cloth. The offensive arms must have been defective, owing to the ignorance of steel. Iron, silver, and gold were all used in making or ornamenting arms, besides the more common bronze. With the welding of iron, and the use of a kind of solder, the workmen in those days appear to have been familiar. The necklaces, eardrops, rings, brooches, collars, crowns, goblets, salvers, and vases, manufactured of the precious metals or the finer sorts of bronze, and often set with precious stones, may be enumerated as the chief articles of the jeweler’s and silversmith’s trade. The various tools employed by workmen, the variety of form and modes of working, were all very similar to those of modern days. III. _Houses and Furniture._ The numerous splendid architectural remains in Greece and Italy, sufficiently establish the proficiency of the two great nations of antiquity in the art of building. With architecture, where it becomes one of the fine arts, we have not now to deal; the scope of the present chapter embraces merely their masonry, and its application to the common uses of life. Still we cannot avoid remarking, that elegance of proportion and beauty of design are no less apparent in their works, than solid strength and correct adaptation to the particular uses for which they were intended. The earlier walls in both countries were undoubtedly very rude efforts--mere lath and plaster, or rough earthen structures strengthened with beams. Log-houses were then common in well-wooded districts. When the art of building had made some progress, brick, rubble, and stone came into general use; until finally, in their best works of art, their stone and marble columns and walls were distinguished by a solidity and accuracy of construction rarely since excelled. The earliest form of Grecian masonry of which we have any remains is the Cyclopean, in which the walls are formed of huge stones, the interstices of these being filled up with smaller ones. The walls of Mycenæ and Tiryns furnish the best specimens; and in some places the outer walls are supposed to have been sixty feet thick. The labor of constructing such works must have been immense. Another form, sometimes termed the second Cyclopean, consisted of polygonal blocks of large size, fitted together with tolerable accuracy, sometimes with great precision and, like the former, not united by mortar.