And the pressing of clay into a matrix or mould, from which the form is taken, appears to be of very ancient date. The book of Job xxxviii. 14, alludes to the practice in the words, “it is turned as clay to the seal.” Of similar or of higher antiquity is “the work of an engraver in stone, _like_ the engravings of a signet,” Exodus xxviii. 11. And “the breastplate of judgment, the Urim and the Thummim,” v. 30, worn “upon Aaron’s heart,” was probably a similar emblematical ornament to that which Diodorus Siculus, in his _History_, bk. i. chap. 75, tells us was put on by the president of the Egyptian courts of justice: “He bore about his neck a golden chain, at which hung an image, set about, or composed of precious stones, which was called TRUTH.”[21] Among instances of emblematical workmanship by the silversmith and his confabricators of similar crafts, we may name that shield of Achilles which Homer so graphically describes,[22] “solid and large,” “decorated with numerous figures of most skilful art;”—or the shields of Hercules and of Æneas, with which Hesiod, _Eoeæ_, iv. 141–317, and Virgil, _Æneid_, viii. 615–73, might make us familiar. Or to come to modern times,—to days our very own,—there is the still more precious, the matchless shield by Vehm, whereon, in most expressive imagery, are hammered out the discoveries of Newton, Milton’s noble epics, and Shakespeare’s dramatic wonders. We may, too, in passing, allude to the richly-embossed and ornamented cups for which our swift racers and grey-hounds, and those “dogs of war,” our volunteers, contend; and the almost imperial pieces of plate, such as the Cæsars never beheld, in which genius and the highest art combine, by their “cunning work,” to carve the deeds and enhance the renown of some of our great Indian administrators and illustrious generals; these all, truly “choice emblemes,” intimate the extent to which our subject might lead. But I forbear to pursue it, though scarcely any path offers greater temptations for wandering abroad amid the marvels of human skill, and for considering reverently and gladly how men have been “filled with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship.” Exodus xxxi. 3.