No articles of ancient manufacture are more common than lamps. They are found in every variety of form and size, in clay and in metal, from the cheapest to the most costly description. A large and handsome gold lamp found at Pompeii in 1863 may be seen in the Pompeian room at the museum in Naples. We have the testimony of the celebrated antiquary, Winkleman, to the interest of this subject. "I place among the most curious utensils found at Herculaneum, the lamps, in which the ancients sought to display elegance and even magnificence. Lamps of every sort will be found in the museum at Portici, both in clay and bronze, but especially the latter; and as the ornaments of the ancients have generally some reference to some particular things, we often meet with rather remarkable subjects. A considerable number of these articles will be found in the British Museum, but they are chiefly of the commoner sort. All the works, however, descriptive of Herculaneum and Pompeii, present us with specimens of the richer and more remarkable class which attract admiration both by the beauty of the workmanship and the whimsical variety of their designs. We may enumerate a few which occur in a work now before us, 'Antiquites d'Herculanum,' in which we find a Silenus, with the usual peculiarities of figure ascribed to the jolly god rather exaggerated, and an owl sitting on his head between two huge horns, which support stands for lamps. Another represents a flower-stalk growing out of a circular plinth, with snail-shells hanging from it by small chains, which held the oil and wick; the trunk of a tree, with lamps suspended from the branches; another, a naked boy, beautifully wrought, with a lamp hanging from one hand, and an instrument for trimming it from the other, the lamp itself representing a theatrical mask. Beside him is a twisted column surmounted by the head of a Faun or Bacchanal, which has a lid in its crown, and seems intended as a reservoir of oil. The boy and pillar are both placed on a square plateau raised upon lions' claws. But beautiful as these lamps are, the light which they gave must have been weak and unsteady, and little superior to that of the old-fashioned common lamps, with which they are identical in principle. The wick was merely a few twisted threads drawn through a hole in the upper surface of the oil vessel, and there was no glass to steady the light and prevent its varying with every breeze that blew.